ONE FROSTY DAWN in November 1934, 500,000 World War I veterans rolled out of their blankets in the pine barrens around the Civilian Conservation Corps camp at Elkridge, Maryland. The brassy bugle notes of “Assembly” hurried them to the camp’s parade ground, where, mounted on a white steed and surrounded by his staff, they found their leader, Major General
At 45 minutes past midnight on July 1, 1955, a haggard Walter J. Bierwagen, president of the D.C. Transit Workers Union, left the negotiation room that recently had become his home away from home. For months, the 2,400 or so members of his union had been seeking a quarter-an-hour raise and a few other contract sweeteners from the Capital Transit Company, which operated most of the buses and all of the streetcars within the metropolitan Washington area.