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Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 1, 1913
Annie Clemenc, Heroine of Michigan’s Copper Country Strike
From the International Socialist Review of December 1, 1913:
“BIG ANNIE”
IN the Calumet strike region they are calling Annie Clemenc the American Joan of Arc. Annie Clemenc is a miner’s wife. A Croatian [Slovenian], she was born in this country and educated in the school at Calumet. If she were dressed in fashion people would turn to look at her if she walked down State street or Fifth avenue. Even in her plain dress she is a striking figure. Strong, with firm but supple muscles, fearless, ready to die for a cause, this woman is the kind all red-blooded men could take off their hats to.
I suppose Annie Clemenc knows what it is to go hungry, but I don’t believe all the millions of dividends ever taken out of the Calumet & Hecla mine could buy her.
The day when the soldiers rode down the flag Annie Clemenc stood holding the staff of that big flag in front of her, horizontally. She faced cavalrymen with drawn sabers, infantry-men with bayonetted guns. They ordered her back. She didn’t move an inch. She defied the soldiers. She was struck on her right wrist with a bayonet, and over the right bosom and shoulder with a deputy’s club.
“Kill me,” she said. “Run your bayonets and sabers through this flag and kill me, but I won’t go back. If this flag will not protect me, then I will die with it.”
After the parade one morning Annie Clemenc came up to the curb where President Moyer was standing. I was there.
Looking up at him she said:
“It’s hard to keep one’s hands off the scabs.”-From the Miners’ Bulletin.
“Big Annie” has been leading the parades of the striking miners to which she walked early every morning from seven to ten miles. The women have been especially brave and class consciousness in this copper war. And the Finns, who have been educated in the principles of Socialism, are lending a militant character to the struggle that helps much to developing the staying powers of the men
[Emphasis added.]
