The Loup City Riot, 1934

Ella Reeve Bloor, born on Staten Island on July 8, 1862, was seventy-one at Loup City. She helped found the Social Democracy of America in 1897 and ran for office as a Socialist, for Connecticut secretary of state in 1908 and New York lieutenant governor in 1918. In 1905 she gathered material in the Chicago stockyards for Upton Sinclair's The Jungle; the name Bloor came from her colleague Richard Bloor, whom she never married. She helped found the Communist Labor Party, sat on the Communist Party's Central Committee from 1932 to 1948 and published We Are Many in 1940.

What the plaque says

The Loup City Riot, 1934 During the Depression low farm prices, accompanied by dust storms and drought, created unrest among farmers and workers in Sherman County and across Nebraska. The Farm Holiday movement, which encouraged farmers to withhold agricultural products from the market, was active. Representatives of left-wing political groups arrived to promote their own programs for economic recovery. In Loup City the People's Standard, edited by A. E. Brunsdon, endorsed local farmer and worker complaints. Violence erupted in Loup City on June 14, 1934, after rumors spread that women poultry workers at the Fairmont Creamery plant might strike for higher wages. Ella Reeve "Mother" Bloor of the American Communist Party, and a group of associates then in Nebraska, organized a demon- stration of support on the courthouse lawn. A march from there to the creamery and back culminated in a clash with local residents. The resulting jail sentences and fines levied upon Mother Bloor and others in her group marked the end of the attempt by the far left to organize farmers and workers in Nebraska. Sherman County Historical Society Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

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