"Until Victory is Achieved:" The Cleveland May Day Riots of 1919

This work recounts and analyses the socio-political conditions leading up to the event known as the 'Cleveland May Day Riots of 1919', as well as the political fallout of the riot. This event is analyzed through four distinct thematic contexts: (1) a statistical investigation of the American and/or immigrant identity of the riot's participants and the city of Cleveland itself; (2) the role of Great War soldiers and the development of a politicized veteran culture; (3) the place of the riot in the wider history of the socialist movement in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Midwest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; (4) and an analysis of the socialist civic-nationalist ideology displayed by the leftist riot participants. Additionally, the author compares this analysis to the subsequent May Day events in Cleveland in the subsequent decades and the further degeneration of the socialist movement in Cleveland.

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