Remembering the LATTIMER Massacre

 

Here on September 10, 1897, nearly 400 immigrant coal miners on strike were met and fired upon by sheriff's deputies. Unarmed, they were marching from Harwood to Lattimer in support of higher wages and more equitable working conditions. Nineteen of the marchers were killed, and 38 were wounded. This was one of the most serious acts of violence in American labor history. Erected 1997 by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

Anthracite coal miners of Polish, Slovak, and Lithuanian origin marched five miles to Lattimer, Pennsylvania on Sept. 10, 1897. Sheriff's deputies fired at them without warning killing 19 men and wounding 38 others; many were shot in the back. The marchers who died were all foreign-born.

Eastern and Southern European immigrants lived in communities around Hazleton, Pennsylvania. The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) was established in 1890 and the union was still in its infancy.  On August 21, 1897 Pennsylvania's anti-immigrant Campbell Act went into effect taxing employers three cents a day for each adult immigrant on their payroll. The anthracite mine owners responded by shifting the burden to the immigrant miner, deducting the tax from his wages. The Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Coal Company discharged twenty young mule drivers who refused to obey a new work rule. The company consolidated its mule stables, forcing the teenage mule drivers to travel much farther each day to pick up their mules, time for which they were not compensated. The mule drivers struck and set up a picket line. Miners marched from colliery to colliery urging others to join the strike in a show of solidarity. Two hundred and fifty men left Harwood on Sept. 10, 1897 for the march to Lattimer; their numbers would grow to 400. UMWA organizer John Fahy advised them not to carry weapons, only the American flag. At Lattimer the marchers were met by Luzerne County Sheriff James Martin and his deputies, armed with rifles and pistols. The deputies opened fire killing 19 men and wounding 38 others. The deceased miners became martyrs, symbols of the labor struggle in the Anthracite Region. A Polish newspaper in Scranton extolled those who died as "the patron saints of the working people in America." In February 1898 Sheriff Martin and his posse stood trial in Wilkes-Barre but all were found innocent. Outraged by the shooting thousands of immigrant miners flocked to the UMWA, adding 15,000 new names to union membership rolls. Two years later John Mitchell, UMWA president, would call a strike of all anthracite miners stating "the coal you dig isn't Slavic or Polish or Irish coal. It's just coal." In 1972 a historic marker and memorial rock were put in place to remember the fallen miners and the great miscarriage of justice at Lattimer. Union members from throughout the state attended the dedication. Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers of America delivered the first speech; he connected the miners' fight for unionization to the struggles of farm laborers in California, many of whom were immigrants. Anti immigrant politics has consequences.