WThe Coal Wars were a series of armed labor conflicts in the United States, roughly between 1890 and 1930. Although they occurred mainly in the East, particularly in Appalachia, there was a significant amount of violence in Colorado after the turn of the century.
WThe Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest labor uprising in United States history and the largest armed uprising since the American Civil War. The conflict occurred in Logan County, West Virginia, as part of the Coal Wars, a series of early-20th-century labor disputes in Appalachia. Up to 100 people were killed, and many more arrested. The United Mine Workers saw major declines in membership, but the long-term publicity led to some improvements in working conditions.
WThe Coal Creek War was an early 1890s armed labor uprising in the southeastern United States that took place primarily in Anderson County, Tennessee. This labor conflict ignited during 1891 when coal mine owners in the Coal Creek watershed began to remove and replace their company-employed, private coal miners then on the payroll with convict laborers leased out by the Tennessee state prison system.
WThe Coal strike of 1902 was a strike by the United Mine Workers of America in the anthracite coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania. Miners striked for higher wages, shorter workdays, and the recognition of their union. The strike threatened to shut down the winter fuel supply to major American cities. At that time, residences were typically heated with anthracite or "hard" coal, which produces higher heat value and less smoke than "soft" or bituminous coal.
WThe Colorado Coalfield War was a major labor uprising in the southern and central Colorado Front Range between September 1913 and April 1914. Striking began in late summer 1913, organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) against the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) after years of poor working conditions. The strike was marred by targeted and indiscriminate attacks from both strikers and individuals hired by CF&I to defend its property. Conflict was focused in the southern coal-mining counties of Las Animas and Huerfano, where the Colorado and Southern railroad passed through Trinidad and Walsenburg. It followed the 1912 Northern Colorado Coalfield Strikes.
WThe Battle of Evarts occurred in Harlan, Kentucky during the Harlan County Wars. The coal miners desired improved working conditions, higher wages, and more housing options for their families. These reasons, along with other factors, led the miners to go on strike. It ended when the Kentucky National Guard was called in to break it up. This battle lasted approximately 15 minutes.
WThe Harlan County War, or Bloody Harlan, was a series of coal mining-related skirmishes, executions, bombings, and strikes that took place in Harlan County, Kentucky, during the 1930s. The incidents involved coal miners and union organizers on one side, and coal firms and law enforcement officials on the other. The question at hand: the rights of Harlan County coal miners to organize their workplaces and better their wages and working conditions. It was a nearly decade-long conflict, lasting from 1931 to 1939. Before its conclusion, an indeterminate number of miners, deputies, and bosses would be killed, state and federal troops would occupy the county more than half a dozen times, two acclaimed folk singers would emerge, union membership would oscillate wildly, and workers in the nation's most anti-labor coal county would ultimately be represented by a union.
WThe Herrin massacre took place on June 21–22, 1922 in Herrin, Illinois, in a coal mining area during a nationwide strike by the United Mineworkers of America (UMWA). Although the owner of the mine originally agreed with the union to observe the strike, when the price of coal went up, he hired non-union workers to produce and ship out coal, as he had high debt in start-up costs. After an exchange of gunfire by armed guards and union miners, three miners and 20 non-miners were killed, including the superintendent and 19 strikebreakers.
WThe Illinois coal wars, also known as the Illinois mine wars and several other names, were a series of labor disputes between 1898 and 1900 in central and southern Illinois.
WThe Lattimer massacre was the violent deaths of at least 19 unarmed striking immigrant anthracite miners at the Lattimer mine near Hazleton, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 1897. The miners, mostly of Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian and German ethnicity, were shot and killed by a Luzerne County sheriff's posse. Scores more workers were wounded. The massacre was a turning point in the history of the United Mine Workers (UMW).
WThe Ludlow Massacre was a massacre perpetrated by anti-striker militia during the Colorado Coalfield War. The Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel and Iron Company guards attacked a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914, with the National Guard using machine guns to fire into the colony. Approximately 21 people, including miners' wives and children, were killed. The chief owner of the mine, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was widely excoriated for having orchestrated the massacre.
WMatewan is a 1987 American drama film written and directed by John Sayles, and starring Chris Cooper, James Earl Jones, Mary McDonnell and Will Oldham, with David Strathairn, Kevin Tighe and Gordon Clapp in supporting roles. The film dramatizes the events of the Battle of Matewan, a coal miners' strike in 1920 in Matewan, a small town in the hills of West Virginia.
WThe Paint Creek–Cabin Creek Strike, or the Paint Creek Mine War, was a confrontation between striking coal miners and coal operators in Kanawha County, West Virginia, centered on the area enclosed by two streams, Paint Creek and Cabin Creek.
WThe Battle of Virden, also known as the Virden Massacre, was a labor union conflict in central Illinois that occurred on October 12, 1898. After a United Mine Workers of America local struck a mine in Virden, the Chicago-Virden Coal Company hired armed detectives or security guards to accompany African-American strikebreakers to start production again. An armed conflict broke out when the train carrying these men arrived at Virden. The detectives shot first but strikers were also armed: a total of four detective/security guards and seven striking mine workers were killed, with five guards and more than thirty miners wounded.
WThe West Virginia coal wars (1912–21), also known as the mine wars, arose out of a dispute between coal companies and miners.
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