Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 2, 1914
Chicago, Illinois – Annie Clemenc Stands with Striking Henrici’s Waitresses
From The Day Book of February 28, 1914:
THE JOAN OF ARC OF THE CALUMET COUNTRY
SIZES UP THE WAITRESSES’ STRIKE
BY JANE WHITAKER
Do people go in that restaurant and eat? Oh, that cannot be possible when they know these girls are picketing outside in a battle for their rights?
I smiled as the question was asked by Annie Clemenc, the Joan of Arc of the Calumet country, the girl who has led so many parades of the striking copper miners and their wives, the girl who has been arrested so many times as she silently or verbally protested against the injustice of the conditions that surround the working class.
“They do patronize that restaurant, some people,” I answered, “but I always try to excuse them by believing they are representatives of the Restaurant Keepers’ Association and the Brewers’ Association, who are backing Henrici’s fight against labor. And even those people have a look of half shame and half bravado on their faces as they come out.”
But the girls inside! The girls who have taken the places of these girls on strike.
Annie’s arm trembled under my fingers, and I knew she was thinking bitterly of the word she uses when she speaks of the miners who have taken the places of the strikers in Calumet.
Aren’t they ashamed to go on serving the people who patronize this restaurant when they know that outside these girls are fighting not only for themselves but for all working women?
She did not wait for me to answer. [She murmured:]
How I pity these girls. They go up and down so quietly with no protest. You can only tell the battle they are fighting by the flag that they carry. Six slim girls and almost an army of police. I could not obey as they obey. I would cry out, “There is a strike here, don’t you go in.”
“When they have done that, they have been arrested and sometimes man-handled,” I explained gently.
“I know what that is,” she answered, and her soft brown eyes grew hard with bitterness. I knew she was thinking of that parade not so many months ago when she led a band of strikers and their sympathizers. When one of the large American flags was cut to shreds by the militia and she snatched the other, and waved it aloft in her strong arms, as she cried:
“Come on. Follow me!”
And I knew she was thinking of the cowardly soldier who had, under a uniform that pledged him to serve his country and protect the rights of her people, a heart filled with love of gold and hatred of the toilers a soldier who struck at Annie with a saber and cut a gash across her wrist, from which the blood poured over her hand.
Annie Clemenc and Ben Goggia, Center Calumet, Michigan, September 13, 1913
And I knew she was thinking of how she had held that flag until its red, white and blue clothed her like a gown, and had cried:
“Kill me, go on and kill me. I don’t care what you do, but you got to kill me through the flag of my country. I respect my country’s flag, if you do not.”
But the cowardly soldier contented himself by striking at her, and several of the strikers dragged her away.
I knew she was thinking of all these things, as I pointed out to her Officer No. 813, the big, brawny man who had belittled himself and his manhood, according to the story told by Miss Meyers, by insulting defenseless girls.
And I pointed out to her Police-woman Mrs. Boyd, who was smiling and chatting with some men, but whose eyes glittered and whose jaw set firmly as the pickets approached and passed.
“You will see things here that will strike you as very strange,” I said. “This is what is termed, a highly civilized city, and in highly civilized cities where labor is trying to come into its rights and capital is fighting to keep labor suppressed, you see brute force matched against woman’s frailty and never against equal strength of men. Only today mounted police rode down a band of unemployed, hungry men, weak and almost hopeless, but the police rode on their horses and used their clubs. They never fight with equal odds in labor wars.”
[Photograph of Sept. 13th added. Emphasis added.]
From The Detroit Free Press of September 16, 1913:
Military Board of Inquiry Probes Desecration of Flag When Strikers’ Parade Was Halted.
By Staff Correspondent.
Calumet, Mich., September 15.-
[…..]
A special [military] board of investigation…heard testimony today on the circumstances surrounding the stopping of the strikers’ parade last Saturday morning [Sept. 13th] which resulted in a saber charge of the mounted troops and the desecration of an American flag.
The testimony showed that [troopers blocked] the parade, intending to keep the strikers from marching into camp property. What was done was to prevent the marchers from turning on a side street to which they had a perfect right, thus precipitating a riot. The flag was torn from the hands of the color bearer, the eagle broken from the staff and the silken folds pierced with bayonet thrusts and torn underfoot. The testimony was so conflicting on this point that no blame was fixed.
“Tall Annie” is Patriotic.
Mrs. Anna Clemens (Clemenc), a Croatian (Slovenian) woman known as “Tall Annie,” who has won notoriety as the leading militant of the district because of her early morning activities in behalf of the strikers, held the flag during the melee until it was wrung from her grasp and flung to the pavement. Before the investigating board she showed a brand of patriotism and love for Old Glory that speaks well for the rising generation, sons and daughters of the foreign copper miners.
[She said:]
When in school I was taught to respect flag,. I no drop flag, if the soldiers shoot me. I held it before me and said, shoot through the flag and kill me. I die first before I drop it in the mud.
The mounted troopers and infantry men in the forefront of the fateful Friday [Saturday] morning rioting were equally sincere in their effort to protect the colors. It appeared that someone, and the strikers swore he wore a uniform, was so angered at seeing the flag waved by a foreign woman that he started the rumpus that caused the trouble. The Croatian woman exhibited marks on her wrists and shoulders where she had been banged as she clung to the staff.
WE NEVER FORGET: Big Annie Clemenc, Heroine of Michigan’s Copper Country, and Christmas Eve, 1913, Italian Hall Tragedy “If this flag will not protect me, then I will die with it.”
-re Sept 13, 1913 Attack by Militia Upon Annie and Her Flag:
ARRESTED AND RELEASED TO CHEERING
Annie was arrested Wednesday, September 10th, in Calumet along with five other women. As they attempted to convince a miner not to go back to work, the women were accosted by Cruse’s deputies. The women fought back against the deputies but were, eventually, arrested. Three hundred supporters followed behind the women as they were taken to the Calumet jail. The crowd remained outside the jail for two hours, cheering loudly for their release. The crowd followed the six women as they were taken to the court of Judge William Fisher, and the cheering began again as Annie, Maggie Aggarto, and the four other women were released on their own recognizance. The women came out of the court undaunted, shouting and clapping their hands. They marched down the street with their supporters following behind cheering and shouting.
The six women were ordered to appear again in court the next week.
“If this flag will not protect me, then I will die with it.”
Just days a few days later, Annie was found, back in the thick of the fight. On the following Saturday morning, September 13th, she led a march of 1,000 strikers and many women supporters through the streets of Calumet as was her usual routine. At the corner of Eighth and Elm, they were confronted by the militia and armed deputies. A soldier on horseback used his saber to knock her flag from her grasp. A striker came to her aid and was pushed to the ground by another soldier who ripped the silk fabric of the flag as he slashed about with his sword. Annie was also knocked to the ground. The flag was stomped into the mud by the horses of the guardsmen. Big Annie hung on to the flag as soldiers tried to take it from her, shouting:
Annie was rescued by other marchers and escaped with only a bayonet blow to the right wrist. The strikers’ march was driven back by soldiers on horseback and by the rifle butts of infantrymen. Deputies joined in on the attack swinging their clubs. The strikers and their supporters retreated to the Italian Hall with Big Annie and her flag, now muddied and slashed.
[Emphasis added.]
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Working Girl Blues – The Barefoot Movement
-Lyrics by Hazel Dickens
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