One of the deadliest massacres in US labor history took place on the outskirts of Hazleton, Pennsylvania on September 10, 1897.
In the late summer of 1897, mineworkers near Hazleton went out on strike and marched to neighboring mine villages (patches) to recruit more men to the side of the United Mine Workers of America.
On Friday, September 10th, several hundred mineworkers marched to the village of Lattimer where a colliery operated by the wealthy Pardee family continued in operation. The marchers sought to stand in solidarity with a newly formed union chapter among the miners at Lattimer. The men, mostly immigrants from Central Europe, marched unarmed.
Luzerne County sheriff James Martin assembled a group of about 150 men with rifles and pistols to disperse the marching miners on the outskirts of Lattimer that afternoon.
At just before 4PM, the two sides came face to face on the road to Lattimer. Sheriff Martin ordered the mineworkers to go home. They steadfastly refused.
What exactly caused the armed men under Sheriff Martin’s command to fire into the group of miners has been disputed since that day. But what happened next was indisputable.
For as long as two minutes the sheriff’s armed men fired continuously, pouring round after round into the backs of the unarmed marchers as they fled for cover.
In the end, 19 men lay dead. Dozens more were grievously wounded. Several succumbed to their wounds in the days that followed.
The strike the men had championed was broken by the Coal and Iron Police and the arrival of the National Guard.
In the aftermath of the massacre, however, the number of union mineworkers in the anthracite coal fields around Hazleton skyrocketed.
In the end, there would be no justice for the martyred miners of Lattimer. Sheriff Martin and members of his armed band were acquitted on charges of murder in 1898.
Their defense was built on vilifying the marching miners as foreign aliens threatening the social and economic order of the Coal Region.
Five years later, during the Great Coal Strike of 1902, many of the aims of those killed and wounded at Lattimer were achieved by the United Mine Workers of America, the union the fallen had died representing.
Read more about Lattimer Massacre and the labor movement
“A Woman’s View” of the Lattimer Massacre | September 10, 1897
“Among the Pennsylvania coal-strikers” – A dispatch from the 1902 Coal Strike