The 2020 campaign has too many troubling similarities to stormy elections of the past

The Labor Day holiday, the traditional start of the last leg of the modern presidential election campaign, began more than a century ago in a year of violence and great economic and political unrest.

But 1894 was not a presidential election year, and the midterm elections were held after President Grover Cleveland signed legislation which created Labor Day as a holiday on June 28, 1894, during the two-month Pullman Strike.

Cleveland and the congressional leaders wanted to appeal to workers, so the legislation was expedited through Congress.

The strike against the Pullman Car Co., which manufactured and operated railroad sleeping cars, was the result of the Panic of 1893, during which Pullman workers lost jobs or wages.

A turbulent time

A national boycott of trains with Pullman cars disrupted transportation of U.S. mail, and Cleveland declared the strike illegal because it prohibited the government from carrying out a constitutional mandate.

Federal military troops broke up the strike.

Several lives were lost, property was damaged and violent behavior took place.

In the end, Cleveland’s Democratic Party lost control of both the U.S. House and Senate to the Republicans during the midterm elections.

2020 echoes 1894

While the 2020 election results are still to come, so much of what happened in 1894 is now being repeated.

Violence also has marked 2020, both in response to the economic crisis created by the coronavirus pandemic and in mostly peaceful protests demanding equal treatment for persons of color and changes in how police departments operate.

During the Pullman Strike, Black strike breakers were hired to replace white members of the American Railways Union, organized by the socialist Eugene V. Debs. (who later served six months in prison for his role in the strike).

The railways union, like all other labor unions at that time, only had white members; Black porters on trains continued to work during the Pullman strike — and the Black strike breakers who were hired were quickly replaced by white workers once the strike ended.

2020 and 1968

Throughout 2020 — and especially since last month’s police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis., — President Donald Trump has made “law and order” a major theme of his re-election campaign.

It has been decades since a major presidential candidate relied heavily on that campaign theme; both Republican Party candidate Richard Nixon and segregationist candidate George Wallace used it during the 1968 election, which was held amid often-violent protests against the Vietnam War.

For the Trump campaign — and supporters such as Attorney General William Barr — the “law and order” theme appears to be designed to appeal to a segment of white voters who fear those who don’t look like them.

Resist violence

As is the case in our daily lives, the 2020 election is poised to be troublesome enough without violence.

That’s why protests about equal justice must not be axiomatic with mob action such as looting and setting fires.

Our better angels tell us to resist violence — not to support or enable it.

We must listen to them.