Yes, Ludlow was a Massacre

I just returned from an invigorating commemoration of the Ludlow Massacre of 1914, hosted jointly by Colorado State University-Pueblo and El Pueblo Museum. For me it started with a Friday afternoon provocation from Scott Martelle. Martelle reminded us of his assertion in Blood Passion that he does not consider the word massacre the correct word for the events of April 20, 1914: “Rather than the intentional execution of a large number of people, the deaths seem most likely to have been the result of criminally negligent acts by the Colorado National Guard, private mine guards and strikebreakers as they torched the camp.” This assertion, which got the most buzz from the attendees and was the basis for a number of discussions and debates among participants, is one that I think is important to be addressed—and rejected.

For Martelle, the argument is part of a wider call, shared by historian Thomas Andrews, author of Killing for Coal, for viewing workers as agents rather than victims. They remind us that workers fought and that more innocent victims, guards and militia were killed in the wider strike than were strikers. They hope to decenter the massacre and replace it with a wider treatment that examines the use and causes of violence in the struggle at Ludlow and against coal companies. The essential argument suggests that workers in the strike were fighting back with guns during April 20 and weren’t defenseless throughout the entire strike, that they fought back. This both spreads responsibility and agency for the violence and asks us to explain it. Both authors allege that previous treatments have hidden this part of the story including the 10 day war that followed April 20. At the conference, Martelle ticked off the names and circumstances of some of the dead and asked us to ponder whether violence worked for either side in these cases.

The noun form of the word massacre, unlike the verb, doesn’t need any intentionality. It is “an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people,” usually with the recognition that one side holds overwhelming force against the other. Only the verb form seems to suggest the need for the “intentional execution” as Martelle alleges. And the labelling of an event as a massacre is always based on subjectivity and perception inherited from the past. To rescind this term from the events when it has been known as that traditionally suggests that we’ve learned something stunningly new in the history since the first designation of “massacre” immediately after the events of April 20, something that could force reconsideration from the inheritance. In fact, there isn’t anything new on that score in any of the recent books about the specific events that would force that kind of reconsideration.

But what happened on April 20 could even fit the verb criteria. The soldiers torched the camps and that was the key factor that led to the deaths of the 13 women & children. Numerous witnesses testified that the soldiers took oil cans to extend the fire and make it complete without concern checking for anyone in the pits. It is true that Captain Philip Van Cise testified that participating soldiers claimed they had intended to destroy only the camp—that the deaths of the children and women was an accident. To use modern parlance, they were claiming it was “collateral damage.” But collateral damage has in the past and in the present not been an obstacle to labeling something a massacre.

Eleven year old Frank Snyder crawled from his underground cavern beneath the Snyder family tent. As he did, a bullet ripped the back of his head off. His father later asked soldiers who were clearing the remnants to help him carry his dead boy’s body away, but the soldiers refused.

Yes, the union men were firing back, but their weaponry constituted only a minor deterrent to soldiers armed with machine guns from Tower Hill, as well as much more sophisticated weaponry than the rifles and non automatic weapons on that day. Moreover, all one has to do is read the testimony from a few of the witnesses to recognize that calling this something other than a massacre does violence to the memory of what the miners and their families endured on those 2 days. Just listen to Helen Korich, a young Croatian girl:

The next day the shooting started. I had my white lace dress on, my Easter dress. The weather was beautiful. They started shooting their machine guns at us, and they knew people were in the basements. My dad got his gun out when they started shooting at us. I wanted to go with my dad. But he said, “No, you can’t go with me. Go home, go with Mama.” We were out of the tent, and my sister came after me and pulled me back by my hair. I was so mad! I thought they would kill him. The shells were going right by my ear. We knew they were going to murder all of us. They were shooting all over, and the union men were scattered. We walked down under a bridge where two union men were shooting. One got shot and fell, and I stepped on him. I was so scared I ran straight through some barbed wire and it tore my Easter dress, but I just kept running, pulling that barbed wire and lace, for what seemed like miles and miles.” (from Marat Moore, Women in the Mines.)

Pearl Jolly, who was trying to aid the women and children, recalled that when the soldiers “kept continually shooting into the camp the women asked me to put a white dress on with red crosses” in the hope the soldiers would recognize the universal sign and it would be protection. The soldiers “could not help but see it. When I got out there they took it for to be a good target and shot at me as hard as they could.” These could join any number of horrifying points of evidence from witnesses to suggest the weight of evidence still shows that whether or not the men fought back with guns, this was intentional execution.

Finally I would argue that decentering the massacre and concentrating on the violence afterward also decenters the role of women in the struggle. That’s why of all the accounts on the massacre and its wider context, the one I would recommend is still Priscilla Long’s Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America’s Bloody Coal industry. The image of those women and children who were killed or endured this attack calls on us to recognize a different history than those presented in recent books, a history in which women and children were central to the struggle. Making the ten day war more central allows us to forget that one of the reasons men didn’t take a more armored position previously was because their families were sitting ducks, exposed to the militia. They fought back, but from the beginning, they fought back with their children exposed. Soldiers and hired mercenaries fought back without any harm to their families. It made it an incredibly uneven fight. Only when the women and children were refugees in Trinidad and elsewhere—after the Massacre–did it become possible to fight back with arms.

Martelle and Andrews contend that use of guns and violence by the strikers was hidden in previous histories. They both argue that the distortions start with Woody Guthrie’s song about the events. But just listen to the verses of Woody Guthrie’s classic and you know that’s just not the case. The song includes the verse:

The children of Ludlow, some of whom were killed on April 20, 1914.

Our women from Trinidad they hauled some potatoes
Up to Walsenburg in a little cart
They sold their potatoes and brought some guns back
And put a gun in every hand

The state soldiers jumped us in a wire fence corner
They did not know that we had these guns
And the redneck miners mowed down them troopers
You should have seen those poor boys run.

Only by ignoring entire chapters in previous books can one make a claim that the union and historians have presented this as a story of “martyrology” and victimization. Barron Beshoar’s Out of the Depths has a chapter “Call to Arms” on the 10 day war, more pages devoted to it in fact than either Blood Passion or Killing for Coal. Priscilla Long, George McGovern, Zeese Papanikosas’ Buried Unsung: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre and all the standard accounts from the mine union that I have on my shelves do more than acknowledge the 10 day war. Only by counting on the ignorance of historians and the general public about these previous accounts can such claims stand. Even the much maligned Howard Zinn uses the Massacre not as a lesson in “martyrology” but about the “fighting spirit” of the union.

The previous treatments consistently claimed that unionists before the massacre used restraint in the face of machine guns trained on them, searchlights as psychological warfare that they faced day and night, constant provocations intended to result in violence. The kind of weapons each side had is relevant. Workers may have had some guns during this struggle, but the other side had high power machine guns, the Death Special, the ability to deny habeas corpus and imprison anyone deemed necessary, the use of the courts in the local, state and federal government.

So I will keep calling this a Massacre to my students. That to me is a central part of this story and is necessary to understanding the full story. In my opinion, it doesn’t detract from the agency of workers, but in fact enhances our understanding of how and why workers fought back in 1913-1914.

For anyone who wants an account of the 10 day war and the long term aftermath, join my facebook page, Mother Jones Lives. I’ll be sharing some information I find enlightening and stunning about these events. In a short time, I’ll be posting a “teaching Ludlow” blog as well.