Service (USES). By that time the USES followed strict anti-discrimination employment practices. The PTC management finally gave in and within a week posted notices about available skilled positions that would be open to all applicants, regardless of race. The company accepted eight black applicants (three from the USES and five from its own ranks) to train as streetcar coachmen. Their training was to take place in late July, and they were to start taking an empty streetcar on the lines from August 1. It was that impending trial run of the streetcars by the eight black trainees that finally triggered the strike. As the news spread, resentment among the white PTC workers began to grow. There were postings on PTC bulletin boards urging non-compliance with the new policy, and a petition was circulated calling for a strike to protest job upgrades of black employees. There were also several meetings called by agitators for the strike to discuss the plan of action. Frank Carney played an active role in these meetings. At the last such meeting, on July 31, Carney announced that the "D-Day" for white workers had arrived. The TWU and the NAACP representatives warned the PTC about impending trouble, but the company management ignored those warnings, maintaining that there was nothing to fear. Events of the strike Start of the strike At 4:00 a.m. on August 1, 1944 most trolleys, buses and subways in Philadelphia stopped running. Strike agitators blocked access to PTC depots with vehicles and advised the arriving workers of a sickout strike. By noon of August 1 the entire PTC transportation system was paralyzed. James McMenamin, a veteran PTC white motorman, organized a 150-member strike steering committee and became one of the main leaders of the strike. Frank Carney, the ousted union boss, was another key strike leader. At the end of the day the strikers held a large meeting, attended by more than 3,500 employees, outside the PTC carbarn on Luzerne Street. The racial rhetoric was escalating. At the meeting, Frank Carney declared that driving a streetcar was a white man's job and said: "put the Negroes back where they belong, back on the roadway". McMenamin declared that "the strike was a strictly black and white issue". The PTC's response to the strike was anemic and was interpreted by some contemporary observers and later historians as tacitly supporting the strike. Arthur Mitten, chairman of the