Easter service marks Colorado massacre centennial
TRINIDAD, Colo. (AP) — A line of mourners are passing a flame from candle to candle, starting a service marking the anniversary of a tragedy that became a rallying cry for unions.
About 100 people are gathered for the service at the scene of the Ludlow Massacre. The service is similar to one miners, who came from a variety of countries, shared in 100 years ago before a strike exploded into violence.
On April 20, 1914 a battle broke out between the Colorado National Guard and miners. Eight people were killed in the fighting, including a Greek union leader. Eleven children and two women died in an ensuing fire.
The massacre and the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York are credited with creating support for a law during the 1930s that gave workers the right to form their own union and gain safer working conditions and benefits like pensions.
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Descendants of striking miners and their families killed during a battle and fire in southern Colorado a century ago are gathering for a traditional Greek Orthodox Easter service on Sunday to mark the anniversary of a tragedy that became a rallying cry for unions.
Bishop Metropolitan Isaiah of Denver will lead the outdoor agape (ah-GAHP’-ay) service, named for the Greek word for love, at the scene of the Ludlow Massacre on dusty, open prairie about 12 miles north of Trinidad. Apart from being conducted mainly in English, the service will be similar to the one the miners, who came from a variety of countries, shared in 100 years ago with the Greek strikers. The Easter service will include the traditional reading of the Gospel in many languages to symbolize the universality of its message.
On April 20, 1914, for reasons that still aren’t clear, a battle broke out between the Colorado National Guard and the miners after months of tension and skirmishes. Eight people were killed in the battle, including a Greek union leader, Louis Tikas. Eleven children and two women who were taking cover from the bullets in a dugout below the strikers’ tent colony died in a fire. The colony was destroyed. The deaths drew national attention to the long running strike against John D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s Colorado Fuel & Iron.
Ludlow, now a ghost town, was one of several tent colonies set up by miners who went on strike against CF&I in September 1913 after they were evicted from their homes in company towns. Besides some boarded up buildings, there is a memorial to those who died that was erected by the United Mine Workers of America. The dugout where the women and children suffocated has been preserved.
The massacre set off 10 days of fighting in which the miners killed 30 mine guards, supervisors and strikebreakers. They surrendered only after President Woodrow Wilson sent federal troops to the state. They didn’t win their demands, which included the right to unionize and to be paid for preparatory “dead” work rather than just the amount of coal they mined. However, Rockefeller, who had previously relied on managers to deal with problems, enacted a company union and grievance procedure.
“It forced him to operate in a public sphere in a way that he had not had to do before,” state historian Bill Convery said.
The massacre, along with the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York, is credited with eventually helping pass a law during the New Deal of the 1930s that gave workers the right to form their own union and gain safer working conditions and benefits like pensions and vacations.
