Deadly Street Car Strike of 1917

On September 6, 1917, the Chattanooga Railway and Light Company union street car workers went on strike. The company hired strikebreakers so they could continue their service routes. Union supporters in other industries united with their street car brothers. Tempers flared across the city while organized labor, street car management, and the local government engaged in fruitless negotiations. Violence broke out, assaults were common, and finally, on September 24, one person was shot dead.

Keep in mind that during the time of this strike, World War 1 was raging. The US War Department was managing the largest German internment prison in the country at Fort Oglethorpe, and in an effort to build up the US Army fighting force for the war effort, more than 30,000 soldiers were training on the open fields of the Chickamauga Battlefield. September of 1917 was, in the author’s opinion, the pinnacle of activity at Fort Oglethorpe in its 42-year history.

Soldiers Mobilized from Fort Oglethorpe

​Four days after the strike began, the Chattanooga’s Acting Mayor Pro Tem T. C. Betterton (Mayor Jesse Littleton was out of town), the sheriff, the Attorney General, and a judge sent a desperate and urgent telegram to the Secretary of War in Washington DC, the Honorable Newton D. Baker, pleading with him to send regular Army troops from Fort Oglethorpe to prevent the city from falling into mob rule.

(left) headlines about deployment of troops to the Armory at 4th and Market Streets (right).

Within one hour of the telegram being sent, about 1AM on Tuesday morning, September 11, 1917, two troops from the 11th Cavalry Regiment and one machine gun company (about 300 men) arrived in the city and headquartered themselves in the Armory at 4th and Market Streets. Chattanooga citizens woke up the next morning to regular Army troops patrolling the downtown streets around the street car barns (later the “Sports Barn” fitness club) with bayonets fixed to their rifles. A day later, Colonel Abner Pickering, Fort Oglethorpe post commander, sent four companies (about 800 men) from the 6th Infantry Regiment to relieve the cavalry. The 6th remained in the city till the strike’s end about a month later. The military mission was to support the Chattanooga Police.

⇒  Read the entire article on the Fort Oglethorpe website here:

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