The Ludlow Massacre was a mass killing perpetrated by anti-striker militia during the Colorado Coalfield War. Soldiers from the Colorado National Guard and private guards employed by Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) attacked a tent colony of roughly 1,200 striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914. Approximately 21 people were killed, including miners' wives and children. John D. Rockefeller Jr. was a part-owner of CF&I who had recently appeared before a United States congressional hearing on the strikes, and he was widely blamed for having orchestrated the massacre.
Jeremiah McLain Rusk was an American Republican politician. He was the second United States secretary of agriculture (1889–1893) and the 15th governor of Wisconsin (1882–1889), and served three terms in the United States House of Representatives (1871–1877), representing northwest Wisconsin. He also served as a Union Army officer during the American Civil War, served one term in the Wisconsin State Assembly (1862), and was the last Bank Comptroller of Wisconsin (1866–1870) before the office was abolished.
Emil Wallber was a German American lawyer and judge. He was the Mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at the time of the Bay View massacre and labor strike, and adopted the city's first ordinance on an eight-hour work day.
The United States textile workers' strike of 1934, colloquially known later as The Uprising of '34 was the largest textile strike in the labor history of the United States, involving 400,000 textile workers from New England, the Mid-Atlantic states and the U.S. Southern states, lasting twenty-two days.
The Columbine Mine massacre occurred in 1927, in the town of Serene, Colorado. In the midst of the 1927–1928 Colorado Coal Strike across the state, workers had been picketing one of the few remaining operating mines, in Serene. A fight broke out between Colorado state militia and a group of striking coal miners, during which the unarmed miners were attacked with firearms. The miners testified that machine guns were fired at them, which the state police disputed. Six strikers were killed, and dozens were injured.
In the Memorial Day massacre of 1937, the Chicago Police Department shot and killed ten unarmed demonstrators in Chicago, on May 30, 1937. The incident took place during the Little Steel strike in the United States.
The following is a timeline of labor history, organizing & conflicts, from the early 1600s to present.
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, sometimes referred to as the Great Upheaval, began on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, after the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) cut wages for the third time in a year. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was the first strike that spread across multiple states in the U.S. The strike finally ended 52 days later, after it was put down by unofficial militias, the National Guard, and federal troops. Because of economic problems and pressure on wages by the railroads, workers in numerous other states, from New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland, into Illinois and Missouri, also went out on strike. An estimated 100 people were killed in the unrest across the country. In Martinsburg, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and other cities, workers burned down and destroyed both physical facilities and the rolling stock of the railroads—engines and railroad cars. Some locals feared that workers were rising in revolution, similar to the Paris Commune of 1871, while others joined their efforts against the railroads.
Bay View is a neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, North America on the shores of Lake Michigan, south of the downtown area and north of the City of St. Francis. Bay View existed as an independent village for eight years, from 1879 to 1887.
The Rock Springs massacre, also known as the Rock Springs riot, occurred on September 2, 1885, in the present-day United States city of Rock Springs in Sweetwater County, Wyoming. The riot, and resulting massacre of immigrant Chinese miners by European immigrant miners, was the result of racial prejudice toward the Chinese miners, who were perceived to be taking jobs from the existing miners. The Union Pacific Coal Department found it economically beneficial to give preference in hiring to Chinese miners, who were willing to work for lower wages than their European counterparts, which angered the existing miners. When the rioting ended, at least 28 Chinese miners were dead and 15 were injured. Rioters burned 78 Chinese homes, resulting in approximately $150,000 in property damage. Despite the identification of the perpetrators, no individuals were prosecuted for the murders or property destruction.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin's history, which includes over 160 years of immigration, politics, and industry, has given it a distinctive heritage.
Louis Tikas, born Elias Anastasios Spantidakis, was the main labor union organizer at the Ludlow camp during the 14-month strike known as the Colorado Coalfield War in southern Colorado, between September 1913 and December 1914; described as "the bloodiest civil insurrection in American history since the Civil War". He was shot and killed during the Ludlow Massacre, the bloodiest event of the strike, on 20 April, 1914.
The Haymarket affair, also known as the Haymarket massacre, the Haymarket riot, the Haymarket Square riot, or the Haymarket Incident, was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The rally began peacefully in support of workers striking for an eight-hour work day, the day after the events at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, during which one person was killed and many workers injured. An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at the police as they acted to disperse the meeting, and the bomb blast and ensuing retaliatory gunfire by the police caused the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians; dozens of others were wounded.
Anti-union violence is physical force intended to harm union officials, union organizers, union members, union sympathizers, or their families. It is most commonly used either during union organizing efforts, or during strikes. The aim most often is to prevent a union from forming, to destroy an existing union, or to reduce the effectiveness of a union or a particular strike action. If strikers prevent people or goods to enter or leave a workplace, violence may be used to allow people and goods to pass the picket line.
Paul Grottkau (1846–1898) was a German-American socialist political activist and newspaper publisher. Grottkau is best remembered as an editor alongside Haymarket affair victim August Spies of the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung, one of the leading American radical newspapers of the decade of the 1880s. Later moving to Milwaukee, Grottkau became one of the leading luminaries of the socialist movement in Wisconsin.
The Colorado Coalfield War was a major labor uprising in the southern and central Colorado Front Range between September 1913 and December 1914. Striking began in late summer 1913, organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) against the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) after years of deadly working conditions and low pay. The strike was marred by targeted and indiscriminate attacks from both strikers and individuals hired by CF&I to defend its property. Fighting was focused in the southern coal-mining counties of Las Animas and Huerfano, where the Colorado and Southern railroad passed through Trinidad and Walsenburg. It followed the 1912 Northern Colorado Coalfield Strikes.
Anti-union violence in the United States is physical force intended to harm union officials, union organizers, union members, union sympathizers, or their families. It has most commonly been used either during union organizing efforts, or during strikes. The aim most often is to prevent a union from forming, to destroy an existing union, or to reduce the effectiveness of a union or a particular strike action. If strikers prevent people or goods to enter or leave a workplace, violence may be used to allow people and goods to pass the picket line.
The cotton pickers' strike of 1891 was a labor action of African-American sharecroppers in Lee County, Arkansas in September, 1891. The strike led to open conflict between strikers and plantation owners, racially-motivated violence, and both a sheriff's posse and a lynching party. One plantation manager, two non-striking workers, and some twelve strikers were killed during the incident. Nine of those strikers were hung in a mass lynching on the evening of September 29.
The Wisconsin Labor History Society (WLHS), founded in 1980, is a non-profit association, based in Milwaukee, to research and inform academics, workers, and general public on the labor history in the US state of Wisconsin. It commemorates the Bay View Tragedy of May 5, 1886, when state militia opened fire and killed eight of 1,500 workers marching during a national strike for an 8-hour work-day.
