1.25” in the Socialist Party colors also reads at center “Button Day.” This fund raiser button has the backpaper of maker “Lopez & Bro./Boston.” Much of the red color has darkened, particularly on the outer rim, due to stain, but button still displays nicely and with full gloss. The button is likely c. 1916 or 1917. A major employer in East St. Louis was the Aluminum Ore Co. The union briefly struck this plant and won during the fall of 1916 but the management of the company responded to the strike by increasing the black labor force, from the large pool of migrants arriving weekly from the South, to limit the future demands of the white union workers. In Dec. 1916 through Feb. 1917, the company kept hiring black employees but at the same time dismissing the corresponding number of white employees who were all members of a union called “Aluminum Ore Employees Protective Association.” A strike followed in the spring of 1917 largely by the white workers. The management imported professional strike breakers from New York and Chicago and the plant superintendant C.B. Fox “borrowed” U.S. Government-owned rifles from the East Side Rifle Club. Fox also negotiated to have 2 companies from the Illinois National Guard patrol bridges and plants to “Guard Against Property Damage By Persons Who Are Sympathizers With The German Cause.” The strike and picketing continued over the next 2 months and more than the company, the strikers blamed the newly –arrived black workers as the cause of their misfortune. Both labor and racial tensions continued to grow ending in the massive July 2, 1917 East St. Louis riot, the most violent and deadly ever for blacks than any other in American history.