Alan Grayson sent this out. Hidden from History Department.
I didn't know about it... I'm embarrassed to say.
We sure didn't cover it in Social Studies.
And we wonder why the billionaires want to solidify their control over public education.
>>>This weekend marks the anniversary of the most brutal confrontation in the history of the American labor movement, the Battle of Blair Mountain. For one week during 1921, armed, striking coal miners battled scabs, a private militia, police officers and the US Army. 100 people died, 1,000 were arrested, and one million shots were fired. It was the largest armed rebellion in America since the Civil War.
This is how it happened. In the Twenties, West Virginia coal miners lived in "company towns." The mining companies owned all the property. They literally ran union organizers out of town - or killed them.
In 1912, in a strike at Paint Creek, the mining company forced the striking miners and their families out of their homes, to live in tents. Then they sent armed goons into that tent city, and opened fire on men, women and children there with a machine gun.
By 1920, the United Mine Workers had organized the northern mines in West Virginia, but they were barred from the southern mines. When southern miners tried to join the union, they were fired and evicted. To show who was boss, one mining company tried to place machine guns on the roofs of buildings in town.
In Matewan, when the coal company goons came to town to take it upon themselves to enforce eviction notices, the mayor and the sheriff asked them to leave. The goons refused. Incredibly, the goons tried to arrest the sheriff, Sheriff Hatfield. Shots were fired, and the mayor and nine others were killed. But the company goons had to flee.
The government sided with the coal companies, and put Sheriff Hatfield on trial for murder. The jury acquitted him. Then they put the sheriff on trial for supposedly dynamiting a non-union mine. As the sheriff walked up the courthouse steps to stand trial again, unarmed, company goons shot him in cold blood. In front of his wife.
This led to open confrontations between miners on one hand, and police and company goons on the other. 13,000 armed miners assembled, and marched on the southern mines in Logan and Mingo Counties. They confronted a private militia of 2,000, hired by the coal companies.
President Harding was informed. He threatened to send in troops and even bombers to break the union. Many miners turned back, but then company goons started killing unarmed union men, and some armed miners pushed on. The militia attacked armed miners, and the coal companies hired airplanes to drop bombs on them. The US Army Air Force, as it was known then, observed the miners' positions from overhead, and passed that information on to the coal companies.
The miners actually broke through the militia's defensive perimeter, but after five days, the US Army intervened, and the miners stood down. By that time, 100 people were dead. Almost a thousand miners then were indicted for murder and treason. No one on the side of the coal companies was ever held accountable.
The Battle of Blair Mountain showed that the miners could not defeat the coal companies and the government in battle. But then something interesting happened: the miners defeated the coal companies and the government at the ballot box. In 1925, convicted miners were paroled. In 1932, Democrats won both the State House and the White House. In 1935, President Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act. Eleven years after the Battle of Blair Mountain, the United Mine Workers organized the southern coal fields in West Virginia.
The Battle of Blair Mountain did not have a happy ending for Sheriff Hatfield, or his wife, or the 100 men, women and children who died, or the hundreds who were injured, or the thousands who lost their jobs. But it did have a happy ending for the right to organize, and the middle class, and America.
Now let me ask you one thing: had you ever heard of this landmark event in American history, the Battle of Blair Mountain, before you read this? And if not, then why not? Think about that. >>>>>
I'm thinking, I'm thinking.
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SoCalNative
(4,613 posts)
niyad
(113,284 posts)
monmouth
(21,078 posts)_Liann_
(377 posts)The same men, the same machine guns, different coal strike in different state in different year.
Exxon-Mobil founder John Rockefeller bought the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek coal properties from the Charles Pratt Company, but kept the change of ownership secret as was his pattern. Pratt & Co. moved into 26 Broadway, NYC, world headquarters for Satandard Oil, and Charles Pratt held a seat on SO's board. The hired killers were paid and armed by Rockefeller senior. After squashing the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek strikes with assassinations in 1912-1913, the killers and their four machine guns were moved to Ludlow, Colorado, in 1914. Ludlow was the tent camp and massacre, not West Virginia. WV was midnight home-invasion murders and sniper assassination, CO was four hour firefight that killed 19 children, women and men by firebombs under machinegun hail.
IT IS IMPORTANT to get the detail correct because within days of the machinegunning people in Ludlow, Rockefeller's properties in Veracruz, Mexico, and Tampico, Mexico, were protected by some 85 people being gunned down by US Marines. Old Gimlet Eye, Smedley Butler, was there and deeply involved, which he recounted years later in a speech titled WAR IS A RACKET.
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/smedleywarisracket.shtml
"I spent 33 years...being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism....
"I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street....
"In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested....I had...a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions....I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents..." (p 118).
Smedley Butler mentions Tampico, Standard Oil but prerhaps did not know that National City Bank was totally controlled by Rockefeller.
niyad
(113,284 posts)
central scrutinizer
(11,648 posts)The whole fucking WORLD honors these American labor heroes by having labor rallies on May 1 but not the good ole US of A. Some of them might have been commies!!!