Hellraisers Journal: News from Colorado Coalfield Strike: Guards/Deputies Continue Reign of Terror at Forbes and Walsenburg

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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday October 26, 1913
News Round-Up from the Coal Miners’ Strike in Southern Colorado

From The Rocky Mountain News of October 25, 1913:

Saturday October 25, 1913
Southern Coalfield, Colorado – Mine guards and deputies continue reign of terror.

Forbes Tent Colony, October 23–At dawn today, Under-Sheriff Zeke Martin and fifty deputies, some of them deputized company gunthugs, brought the Death Special back to the small colony. They surrounded the colony with four machine guns pointed at the terrified residents. The men were rounded up and held at gunpoint. The women and children were forced from their beds. The tents were torn apart, trunks, beds, and floorboards, in a search for guns. Four of the striking miners were arrested and taken away for the death of Luca Vahernick, the striker who was murdered by the gunthugs that ambushed the colony on the 17th.

Walsenburg, October 24–Thirty heavily armed company guards and deputy sheriffs rode their horses into town today. They came to escort a scab’s wife into the stockade of the Walsen Mine. Strikers, along with their wives and children, gathered and began shouting and jeering, “Scab herders, scab herders!” Some of the children threw dirt clods. Without warning, the deputies opened fire. They fired several times, and then rode off leaving two dead strikers (Andy Auvinen and Cisto Croci) and one dying (Kris Kokich) in the street behind them. These brother-miners  join Gerald Lippiatt, Mack Powell, and Luca Vahernick as the martyrs, thus far, of the miners’ strike in the coalfields of southern Colorado.

Sheriff Farr and 50 deputies barricaded themselves in the courthouse as strikers and sympathizers in the town of Walsenburg picked up their guns and called for vengeance.

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SOURCES & IMAGES

Quote John Lawson 1913,
after October 17th Death Special attack on Forbes Tent Colony, Beshoar p74
https://archive.org/details/outofdepths0000unse/page/74/mode/1up?q=bandanna

The Rocky Mountain News
(Denver, Colorado)
 -Oct 25, 1913
https://www.genealogybank.com/doc/newspapers/image/v2:12C601A5C4B97518@GB3NEWS-147910E381B88958@2420066-14775812F7705E18@2-14775812F7705E18

Buried Unsung
Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre
-by Zeese Papanikolas
U of Nebraska Press, 1991
https://archive.org/details/buriedunsungloui0000papa/mode/1up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/buriedunsungloui0000papa/page/95/mode/1up?view=theater&q=forbes

Out of the Depths
The Story of John R. Lawson, A Labor Leader
-Barron B. Beshoar
Colorado Labor Historical Committee
of the Denver Area Labor Federation, 1942
https://archive.org/details/outofdepths0000unse
https://archive.org/details/outofdepths0000unse/page/80/mode/1up?view=theater&q=walsenburg
https://archive.org/details/outofdepths0000unse/page/81/mode/1up?view=theater&q=walsenburg