Tent colony burned, Tikas and roughly 20 other residents killed. Ten days of increased fighting followed by federal military intervention.
Parties
United Mine Workers of America (UMWA)
Colorado Fuel and Iron Company; Colorado National Guard Hired Strikebreakers
Lead figures
Louis Tikas (Organiser, UMWA) † James Fyler (Financial Secretary, UMWA) John R. Lawson
Karl Linderfelt Patrick J. Hamrock Gen. John Chase John D. Rockefeller Jr.
Casualties and losses
Deaths: Contemporary reports: 20 (12 children, 8 adults), including 1 bystander[1] Modern estimate: at least 19 (12 children and 2 women) and at least 5 strikers, including Tikas[2]: 222–223
Deaths: Contemporary reports: 3[3] or 4[4] Modern estimate: 1[5][2]: 2
v
t
e
Colorado Coalfield War 1913–1914
Strikers
United Mine Workers of America
Louis Tikas
John R. Lawson
Mother Jones
Frank Hayes
Mary Thomas O'Neal
Company
Colorado Fuel and Iron
John D. Rockefeller Jr.
Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency (Charles Lively)
William Lyon Mackenzie King
Ivy Lee
John C. Osgood
Victor-American Fuel Company
Government
Elias M. Ammons
Stephen R. Fitzgarrald
Alma V. Lafferty
Helen Ring Robinson
Woodrow Wilson
National Guard
John Chase
Karl Linderfelt
Patrick J. Hamrock
Hildreth Frost
Events
Ludlow Massacre
10-Day War
Locations
Sangre de Cristo Mountains
Las Animas County
Ludlow
Walsenburg
Trinidad
Aguilar
Delagua
La Veta
Cañon City
Segundo
Pueblo
Primero
Berwind
Commemorations
Ludlow Monument
"We're Coming, Colorado"
"Ludlow Massacre" (song)
v
t
e
Labor disputes by sector
v
t
e
Agricultural strikes
1800s
Thibodaux sugar 1887
Cotton pickers 1891
1900s–1920s
Oxnard 1903
Seattle fishermen 1912
Grabow lumber 1912
Wheatland hops 1913
northern Minnesota lumber 1916–1917
Hanapepe sugar 1924
Imperial cantaloupe 1928
1930s
Imperial lettuce 1930
Santa Clara cannery 1931
Vacaville tree pruners 1932
Wisconsin milk 1933
Yakima hops 1933
California agricultural (Santa Clara cherry, El Monte berry) 1933
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, including miners' wives and children, were killed. John D. Rockefeller Jr., a part-owner of CF&I who had recently appeared before a United States congressional hearing on the strikes, was widely blamed for having orchestrated the massacre.[6][7]
The massacre was the seminal event of the 1913–1914 Colorado Coalfield War, which began with a general United Mine Workers of America strike against poor labor conditions in CF&I's southern Colorado coal mines.[8] The strike was organized by miners working for the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company and Victor-American Fuel Company. Ludlow was the deadliest single incident during the Colorado Coalfield War and spurred a ten-day period of heightened violence throughout Colorado. In retaliation for the massacre at Ludlow, bands of armed miners attacked dozens of anti-union establishments, destroying property and engaging in several skirmishes with the Colorado National Guard along a 225-mile (362 km) front from Trinidad to Louisville.[6] From the strike's beginning in September 1913 to intervention by federal soldiers under President Woodrow Wilson's orders on April 29, 1914, an estimated 69 to 199 people were killed during the strike. Historian Thomas G. Andrews declared it the "deadliest strike in the history of the United States."[2]: 1
The Ludlow Massacre was a watershed moment in American labor relations. Socialist historian Howard Zinn described it as "the culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history".[9] Congress responded to public outrage by directing the House Committee on Mines and Mining to investigate the events.[10] Its report, published in 1915, was influential in promoting child labor laws and an eight-hour work day. The Ludlow townsite and the adjacent location of the tent colony, 18 miles (29 km) northwest of Trinidad, Colorado, is now a ghost town. The massacre site is owned by the United Mine Workers of America, which erected a granite monument in memory of those who died that day.[11] The Ludlow tent colony site was designated a National Historic Landmark on January 16, 2009, and dedicated on June 28, 2009.[11] Subsequent investigations immediately following the massacre and modern archeological efforts largely support some of the strikers' accounts of the event.[12]
^Simmons, R. Laurie; Simmons, Thomas H.; Haecker, Charles; Siebert, Erika Martin (May 2008). National Historic Landmark Nomination: Ludlow Tent Colony(PDF). National Park Service. pp. 41, 45.
^ abcAndrews, Thomas G. (2010). Killing for Coal. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674736689. OCLC 1020392525.
^Walker, Mark (2003). "The Ludlow Massacre: Class, Warfare, and Historical Memory in Southern Colorado". Historical Archaeology. 37 (3). New York City: Springer: 66–80. doi:10.1007/BF03376612. JSTOR 25617081. S2CID 160942204.
^McGuire, Randall (November–December 2004). "Letter from Ludlow: Colorado Coalfield Massacre: Excavators uncover chilling evidence of a brutal assault during a 1914 miners' strike". Archaeology. 57 (6). JSTOR 41780959.
^Simmons, R. Laurie; Simmons, Thomas H.; Haecker, Charles; Martin Siebert, Erika (May 2008). National Historic Landmark Nomination: Ludlow Tent Colony(PDF). National Park Service. pp. 41, 45.
^ ab"Ludlow Massacre", Denver University
^Cite error: The named reference :2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^"The Invention of Public Relations". YouTube. Archived from the original on November 14, 2021.
^Zinn, Howard (1970). The politics of history. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press. p. 79. ISBN 080705450X. OCLC 67649.
^United States Commission on Industrial Relations (1915). Final Report and Testimony Submitted to Congress by the Commission of Industrial Relations, The Colorado Miners' Strike. Government Printing Office. pp. 6345–8948.
^ abMcPhee, Mike (June 28, 2009). "Mining Strike Site in Ludlow Gets Feds' Nod". Denver Post. Denver. Archived from the original on September 26, 2018.
^Simmons, R. Laurie; Simmons, Thomas H.; Haecker, Charles; Siebert, Erika Martin (May 2008). National Historic Landmark Nomination: Ludlow Tent Colony(PDF). National Park Service.
The LudlowMassacre was a mass killing perpetrated by anti-striker militia during the Colorado Coalfield War. Soldiers from the Colorado National Guard...
Tensions climaxed at the Ludlow Colony, a tent city occupied by about 1,200 striking coal miners and their families, in the LudlowMassacre on 20 April 1914 when...
American history since the Civil War". He was shot and killed during the LudlowMassacre, the bloodiest event of the strike, on 20 April, 1914. Tikas was born...
upon, and the ultimate death of, strike leader Louis Tikas during the LudlowMassacre. He was the son of librarian Klas August Linderfelt. Most of what is...
with a machine gun. They would repeat this type of tactic during the LudlowMassacre in Colorado the next year, with even more disastrous results. By 1920...
and militia engaged in a shootout at the Ludlow tent colony, resulting in what is known as the LudlowMassacre. Major Patrick Hamrock and Linderfelt organized...
groups looking to organize. The agents were also responsible for the LudlowMassacre of 1914 in Colorado. Albert had already been in the Matewan area and...
Baldwin–Felts detectives. This incident, along with events such as the LudlowMassacre in Colorado six years earlier, marked an important turning point in...
the United Mine Workers called a strike against coal-mining companies in Ludlow, Colorado. The largest mining company was the Rockefeller family-owned Colorado...
This is a partial list of massacres in the United States; death tolls may be approximate. For single-perpetrator events and shooting sprees, see List...
The Ludlows were a popular Irish folk band in the 1960s. Their name was derived from Woody Guthrie's song "LudlowMassacre", concerning a fatal miners'...
Organized labour portal Anti-union violence Ludlowmassacre Herrin massacre Lattimer massacre Bay View Massacre Murder of workers in labor disputes in the...
King Coal confronts John D. Rockefeller Jr., and his role in the 1914 LudlowMassacre in the coal fields of Colorado. Sinclair was an outspoken socialist...
United States List of massacres in the United States List of National Historic Landmarks in Ohio LudlowMassacre Orangeburg massacre "Announcements and actions...
The Lattimer massacre refers to a Luzerne County sheriff's posse killing at least 19 unarmed striking immigrant anthracite miners at the Lattimer mine...