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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.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Annie Clemenc, Die Behind Flag, Mnrs Bltn, Sept 16, 1913
per Comstock p42
https://books.google.com/books?id=0-FGAgAAQBAJ
International Socialist Review
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Dec 1913, p342
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v14n06-dec-1913-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf
See also:
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday September 17, 1913
Calumet, Michigan – American Flag Knocked to the Ground by Guardsmen
Hellraisers Journal: From The Day Book of October 8, 1913
Heroine Annie Clemenc by N. D. Cochran-American Joan of Arc in Fight for Liberty
Conditions in the Copper Mines of Michigan
Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the
Committee on Mines and Mining, House of Representatives,
Sixty-third Congress, second Session Pursuant to H. Res. 387,
Volume 4
United States. Congress. House. Committee on Mines and Mining
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1914
(search: “annie clements”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=JlROAQAAMAAJ
Tag: Annie Clemenc
https://weneverforget.org/tag/annie-clemenc/
Tag: Michigan Copper Country Strike of 1913-1914
https://weneverforget.org/tag/michigan-copper-country-strike-of-1913-1914/
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Union Woman