Tag: Labor Martyrs

WE NEVER FORGET: August 16, 1913, Gerald Lippiatt, Age 38, Shot Down by Gunthugs on the Streets of Trinidad

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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WE NEVER FORGET

Gerald Lippiatt
Shot Down by Gunthugs at Age 38

Gerald Lippiatt, Scott Martelle Blog, Aug 16, 2013
Gerald Lippiatt

Gerald Lippiatt did not come into Trinidad looking for fight. He was a striker from the northern field who was in the southern field working as an organizer. But, sadly, he took the bait when George Belcher and Walter Belk, two well-known Baldwin-Felts gunthugs, began to butt him with their elbows as he attempted to walk around them on Commercial Street. Other gunmen joined in, cursing him as they lurked about on the sidewalk, smoking their cigarettes.

Brother Lippiatt headed to the Packer block for his gun. Several of his fellow organizers in the union office tried to stop him to no avail.

“All right, you rat, let’s have it out,” Lippiatt shouted at Belk. The professional gunthug knew his business, and Lippiatt was soon lying dead in the center of the street.

The Colorado State Federation of Labor met for their yearly convention in Trinidad two days after the killing of Brother Lippiatt. The chair which would have been occupied by Lippiatt was draped in black. Perhaps, Brother Lippiatt was on their minds as they voted their support to District 15 of the United Mine Workers of America for any action deemed necessary with respect to conditions in the southern coalfields. Efforts were underway to avoid a strike against coal operators of southern coalfields, but the likelihood of avoiding that strike was fading with each passing day.

The coffin of Brother Lippiatt left Trinidad accompanied by the delegates from northern Colorado who were returning home from the C. F. of L. Convention. Gerald Lippiatt was brought home to Colorado Springs for burial. As the flag-draped coffin was taken from the baggage car and loaded onto the hearse, the delegates stood silently by, hats in hand, remembering who was responsible for his murder.

It was the sad duty of John McLennan, President of District 15 of the UMWA, to call John Lawson, International Board Member, at his home in Denver to inform him of Lippiatt’s death. Lawson related the conversation he had with Lippiatt three days before his death:

“I am leaving for Trinidad tonight, John, and I want to tell you goodbye. I think I am going to be killed”

“Killed? What do you mean?”

“The gunmen have been pressing me pretty hard down there, John, but I am going back. I’ve got a hunch they are going to get me this time.”

“Then you mustn’t go. Stay here and we’ll send someone else down; someone who isn’t so well known to them.”

“No, John, I’m going back. It is my job, and I want to go. But this is my last trip. Goodbye.”

Gerald Lippiatt was born in England in 1874, and came to America in 1891 with his parents and five siblings. The family settled in Ohio. He was survived by an older brother in Colorado Springs. He was engaged to be married to Edith Green of Rugby. He was likely a father as Martelle mentions a descendant. He had been Secretary of the UMWA local union in Frederick, Colorado, and was active in the northern coalfield strike before being sent to the southern field as an organizer.

Continue reading “WE NEVER FORGET: August 16, 1913, Gerald Lippiatt, Age 38, Shot Down by Gunthugs on the Streets of Trinidad” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the Miner’s Bulletin: Two Strikers Shot Down by Gunthugs in Michigan’s Copper Country

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege ed, Ab Chp III—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday August 18, 1913
Seeberville, Michigan – Deputies and Waddell Gunthugs Kill Two at Boarding House

From the Miner’s Bulletin of August 16, 1913:

Murder of Tijan and Putrich at Seeberville MI, Mnrs Bltn p1, Aug 16, 1913

Strikers Murdered by Deputies in Cold Blood
Will they be Punished?

Two men were murdered at a mine location near Painesdale known as Seeberville, Thursday afternoon August 14. Two others were shot, one of whom may die.

Louie Tijan was shot and instantly killed at his boarding house, by secret service men last night. Steve Putrich shot through the breast, died from his wounds in the hospital about noon Friday. Stanko Stepic in hospital shot through left wrist and wounded in body, may die.

John Stimac, shot in the stomach while sitting at table. The above outrages came as the crimes to the reign of organized thuggery under the direction of James Waddell. These killings are among the fruits harvested in this district from the importation of man-killers. The morning lyer [liar?] of the operator [the Mining Gazette?] stated that the killing was the result of resisting arrest.

Here are the facts.

John Kalem and J. Stimac came from South Range yesterday afternoon, to their home in Seeberville following the railroad track till near the bridge when they took a by-path leading to a mine shack, and on the property of the mining company, although in general use. While near the shaft, a secret service man ordered them back. They replied: “We always go this way, it’s closer,” and went on. They had scarcely reached the house, when Deputy Sheriff, Henry James, trammer boss, and six secret service men arrived. The trammer boss pointed out Kalem as the man. The leader of the secret service man says: “come with me.” He replied: “I guess not.” At that the leader sprang upon him and began clubbing him. All the men ran into the boarding house. Upon command from the leader, the secrete service man, two at each window, began firing into the little home, and James shot one of the party, shooting from the doorway, with the results indicated above.

The tragedy occurred in an Austrian boarding house. The wife of the proprietor has four children, the oldest four years old, the youngest a baby of six months, in her arms, was burned by powder smoke from the shots of the secret service men shooting into the room where she and her children were. Almost at once after the shooting, deputies and soldiers arrived. They searched the house, even going through the trunks of the men. They found no weapons of any kind. There was no resistance to the officers. There was no call upon the men to surrender. The secret service men [Waddell men, many of them sworn in as deputies] came to murder, and they accomplished their infamous purpose.

Then, as if to afford some justification for their murder, they went around the houses of the location picking up all old broken bottles, the product of years and gathered them up, claiming they had been thrown at them. It was too late to manufacture evidence. There were too many witnesses to the crime, who knew what the thugs were doing.

It is reported that the Prosecuting Attorney twice requested that the Sheriff serve warrants upon the murders. He has not done so yet. He divides honors(?) with other accessories before the facts.

Let the reader put down these facts as against the statements of the Mining Gazette, the advocate of deportation, and constantly inviting to assassination.

Seeberville Murders of August 14, 1913:

Two men were gunned down Thursday August 14th in a small hamlet just south of Calumet when deputies and Waddell gunthugs opened fire on a boarding house. Inside the house were men, women and children. Several other men were seriously injured and a baby was burned on the face by gunpowder.

The trouble started when two strikers took a well worn shortcut across mine property. This had long been their route home, and little did they think it would be cause for arrest, much less a murderous barrage of bullets upon their home.

The dead are Steve Putrich and Alois Tijan.

Funeral for Brothers Tijan and Putrich, August 17, 1913:

Mourners arrived in Calumet by train from all over the Keweenaw August 17th  for the funerals of Alois Tijan and Steve Putrich. Services were held at the Croatian Catholic Church, St. John the Baptist, with Father Medin presiding. The mourners than marched two miles to Lake View Cemetery lead by the Finnish Humu Band.

After the funeral, 5,000 gathered for a demonstration of solidarity. Joseph Cannon spoke. He blamed the “sultans of industry” for murdering these two men. He named Governor Ferris “as an accessory before the fact of this lamentable double murder.” He pointed out Sheriff Cruse whose “hands dripped with blood.” And to the mine owners, he said:

Boston coppers, long have you boasted of your mines of wealth untold. Long have you grown fat by keeping us lean.

He honored the Martyrs:

Their lips are sealed in death, but they spoke in a thousand tongues the victory which is coming and for which they have not worked in vain.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the Miner’s Bulletin: Two Strikers Shot Down by Gunthugs in Michigan’s Copper Country” →

Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: John Murray on Unity of Japanese and Mexican Workers at Oxnard, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote June 8, Lizarraras to Gompers re Unity of Japanese n Mexicans at Oxnard CA, ISR p78, Aug 1903—————-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday August 5, 1903
Oxnard, California – J. Murray on Unity of Japanese and Mexican Laborers, Part I

From The International Socialist Review of August 1903

A Foretaste of the Orient 

[-by John Murray Jr.]

[I of III]

Oxnard Wounded, SF Call p9, Mar 25, 1903
The San Francisco Call
March 25, 1903

The town of Oxnard is in Ventura county, about sixty miles north of Los Angeles, and was founded by the American Beet Sugar Company, in which Henry T. Oxnard is the central figure. On the evening of March 24, of the present year, the Associated Press dispatches announced that there was “riot” in Oxnard — that the Japanese and Mexican unions were terrorizing the town, shooting and killing peaceable non-union men, whose only desire was to exercise the right of American citizens and work for any wage they chose.

Being within a few hours’ ride of the place, the next morning’s train carried me to the gates of the sugar factory. My only companions on the car were a parcel of drummers, who were quite naturally anxious to know just how peaceful a state the town might now be in. To this end anyone who might know, and especially the conductor, was cross-questioned in a most thorough manner:

“How many men were killed-could the sheriff control the situation-was it safe for a traveling man to go about his business on the streets?” were some of the queries that received apparently confusing replies.

“Yes, there was a man killed and four others wounded-all union men-and the town is now quiet.”

“How’s that,” said a salesman for a wholesale hardware firm, “union men start a riot and only union men shot? Something queer about that! I know a house that shipped revolvers here last week-who bought ’em, that’s what I’d like to know. Couldn’t have been the unions if all the dead men are on the other side,”-which was without doubt a common sense conclusion from a purely business point of view.

Certainly the town seemed quiet, as I walked up from the station, the only noticeable thing being a little squad of Japanese union pickets that met the train and were easily recognized by their white buttons labeled “J. M. L. A.” (Japanese-Mexican Labor Association) over the insignia of a rising sun and clasped hands. Oxnard was full of those white buttons-and when the first thousand of them had been distributed, and no more obtainable, hundreds of beet thinners put red buttons in their button holes to show that they were union men.

On the presentation of my blue card, I was warmly welcomed at headquarters by J. M. Lizarraras and Y. Yamagachi, secretaries of the Mexican and Japanese unions. They had a plain tale to tell, and one which I found was fully borne out by facts known to all the towns folk-for even the petty merchants, strange to say, freely acknowledged that the men had been bullied, swindled and shot down, without reason or provocation.

The Beet Sugar Company had fostered the organization of a scab contracting company-known as the Western Agricultural Contracting Company-whose double purpose was to reduce the price of thinning beets from five to as low as four and a quarter dollars an acre, and at the same time undermine and destroy the unions. Not content with the lowering of wages, they also forced the men to accept store orders instead of cash payments, with its usual accompaniment of extortionate prices for the merchandise sold. These tricks, of course, are as old as the hills, and consequently when the men rebelled there was a great surprise among the labor skinners, who had no idea that Japanese and Mexicans would ever have wit enough to unite for mutual protection, or that if they did temporarily unite, their organization could possibly last for any length of time, with the obstacles of different tongues, temperaments and social environments to bring speedy wreck to such a union. But the men did organize, did hang together-in spite of the rain of bullets which were poured down upon them — and finally whipped Oxnard’s beet sugar company, with its backing of millions.

To Socialists it is needless to point out that to whip a capitalist to-day means nothing more than that you must fight him again to-morrow, but the significance of this particular skirmish, in the great class war, lies in the fact that workers from the Occident and Orient, strangers in tongues, manners and customs, gathered together in a little western village, should so clearly see their class interest rise above all racial feelings of distrust.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: John Murray on Unity of Japanese and Mexican Workers at Oxnard, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: Paterson Jury Hung in Trial of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn; Quinlan Sent to Prison; Striker Madonna Killed

Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Quote EGF, Heaven n Hell, ISR p617, Jan 1910—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday July 13, 1913
Paterson, New Jersey – Trial of Miss Flynn, Quinlan to Prison, Striker Murdered

From Solidarity of July 12, 1913:

Paterson EGF Trial, Quinlan to Prison, Vincenzo Madonna killed, Sol p, July 12, 1913

From The Topeka State Journal of July 3, 1913:

Paterson, EGF n E Milholland, Tpk St Jr p8, July 3, 1913

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Paterson Jury Hung in Trial of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn; Quinlan Sent to Prison; Striker Madonna Killed” →

Hellraisers Journal: Three West Virginia Strikers Killed by Deputized Gunthugs at Stanaford, Raleigh County, West Virginia

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege ed, Ab Chp III—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday March 5, 1903
Stanaford, Raleigh County, West Virginia – Deputies Gun Down Striking Miners

From The San Francisco Call of February 26, 1903:

Stanaford Mt Massacre, SF Call p3, Feb 26, 1903

CHARLESTON, W. Va., Feb. 25.-At Stanniford [Stanaford] City, in Raleigh County, at dawn this morning, a battle took place between the joint posses of Deputy United States Marshal Cunningham and Sheriff Cook on one side and rioting miners on the other, as a result of which three miners were killed, two others mortally wounded and a number of others on both sides more or less seriously hurt…..

Miners murdered by deputized gunthugs at Stanaford, Raleigh County, West Virginia, at dawn, Wednesday February 25, 1903:

William Dodson
William Clark
Richard Clayton

Miners mortally wounded:

Lucien Lawson
Joe Hizer

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Three West Virginia Strikers Killed by Deputized Gunthugs at Stanaford, Raleigh County, West Virginia” →

WE NEVER FORGET: February 25, 1903-Mother Jones and the Massacre of Raleigh Co. Miners at Stanaford Mountain, WV

Janet RayeMother Mary Harris Jones
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Has anyone ever told you, my children,
about the lives you are living…?
-Mother Jones
———-

MOTHER JONES, MINERS’ ANGEL

“I am one of you, and I know what it is to suffer.”

Mother Jones by Bertha Howell (Mrs Mailly), ab 1902

Let us stop and consider, for a moment, what would cause thousands of miners to lay down their tools and go out on strike, when striking meant homelessness and hunger for themselves and their families. Striking also brought down upon them the terror of the company guards, heavily armed deputies (often one and the same), state militia, bullpens, raids, court injunctions, and the wrath of the capitalistic press. In 1897, Mother Jones was in West Virginia traveling and speaking to miners and their families. John Walker of the United Mine Workers of America was traveling with her. In 1904, a reporter who had accompanied her wrote this account of one of her speeches:

Has any one ever told you, my children, about the lives you are living, more so that you may understand how it is you pass your days on earth? Have you told each other about it and thought it over among yourselves, so that you might imagine a brighter day and begin to bring it to pass? If no one has done so, I will do it for you today. I want you to see yourselves as you are, Mothers and children, and to think if it is not time you look on yourselves, and upon each other. Let us consider this together, for I am one of you, and I know what it is to suffer.

So the old lady, standing very quietly in her deep, far-reaching voice, painted a picture of the life of a miner from his young boyhood to his old age. It was a vivid picture. She talked of the first introduction a boy had to those dismal caves under the earth, dripping with moisture often so low that he must crawl into the coal veins; must lie on his back to work. She told how miners stood bent over until the back ached too much to straighten, or in sulpher water that ate through the shoes and made sores on the flesh; how their hands became cracked and the nails broken off in the quick; how the bit of bacon and beans in the dinner pail failed to stop the craving of their empty stomachs, and the thought of the barefoot children, at home and the sick mother was all too dreary to make the homegoing a cheerful one….

And so, while he smoked, the miner thought how he could never own a home, were it ever so humble; how he could not make his wife happy, or his children any better than himself, and how he must get up in the morning and go through it all again; how that some day the fall of rock would come or the rheumatism cripple him; that Mary herself might die and leave him, and some day there would be no longer for him even the job that was so hard and old age and hunger and pain would be his lot. And why, because some other human beings, no more the sons of God than the coal diggers, broke the commandment of God which says, “Thou shalt not steal,” and took from the toiler all the wealth which he created, all but enough to keep him alive for a period of years through which he might toil for their advantage.

[Said Mother Jones:]

You pity yourselves, but you do not pity your brothers, or you would stand together to help on another.

Continue reading “WE NEVER FORGET: February 25, 1903-Mother Jones and the Massacre of Raleigh Co. Miners at Stanaford Mountain, WV” →

Hellraisers Journal: Ida Braeman, Garment Striker, Age 17, Shot Down in Cold Blood by Clothing Manufacturer at Rochester, N. Y.

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Pray for dead, ed, Ab Chp 6, 1925—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 20, 1913
Rochester, New York – Ida Braeman, 17-Year-Old Striker, Shot Down by Boss

From the Chicago Day Book of February 6, 1913:

KILLS GIRL STRIKER WITH SHOT GUN

Ida Braeman, Labor Martyr, Rochester NY Feb 5, 1913

Rochester, N. Y., Feb. 6.-Ira Braeman, 17 years old, was shot and killed in cold blood by Valentine Sauter here last night.

Ida Braeman was a girl of the garment workers’ strike. Sauter is a clothing manufacturer.

Every labor union in Rochester will unite in the effort to push the charge of murder in the first degree against Sauter.

Sauter was in his shop when a group of strikers gathered outside and called to the strikebreakers within to quit work and join them.

Sauter picked up a shotgun and went to a window. He fired point-blank into the little group of girl strikers.

Ida Braeman was killed instantly; three others were wounded.

Sauter’s shot scattered the strikers, but when they saw the body of Ida Braeman lying in the street they came back, and only the arrival of the police prevented Sauter’s shop being torn down about his head. On the way to the station, the police had to use their clubs to protect the man.

Sauter says he fired because he thought his property was in danger.

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

From Solidarity of February 15, 1913:

re Murder of Striker Ida Braeman, Sol p1, Feb 15, 1913

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Ida Braeman, Garment Striker, Age 17, Shot Down in Cold Blood by Clothing Manufacturer at Rochester, N. Y.” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The Shame of San Diego” by Hartwell S. Shippey, Part II

Janet RayeFree Speech Fights
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Quote re San Diego FSF Fire Hose Emerson, LA TX p11, Mar 11, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 4, 1912
“The Shame of San Diego” by Hartwell S. Shippey, Part II

From the International Socialist Review of May 1912:

The Shame of San Diego

by HARTWELL S. SHIPPEY

[Part II of II]

San Diego FSF Fire Hose, ISR p718, May 1912

Up to and preceding March 14, the fight was the conventional free speech fight; but on that date (Sunday) the police took the initiative and ceased booking their prisoners, though the original captives who are charged with criminal conspiracy and jail breaking are still reposing behind the bars. (The “jail breaking” consisted of supposed smashing of jail windows by prisoners who were denied food and water and were compelled to drink from the toilet.) At a meeting held in front of the city jail, outside of the proscribed district, the fire department was called upon and three fire engines played powerful streams of water upon the speakers, knocking down Mrs. Emerson, Miss McKamey, Mrs. Wightman, a religious speaker, but a courageous and high-minded woman, Miss Ruth Wightman, 44 years of age, and overturning a baby carriage, the baby being swept into the gutter by the heavy stream of water.

Mrs. Ray Holden, an innocent by stander, was clubbed over the abdomen by a guardian of the “peace,” being unconscious for two hours following. When her husband called at the police station to investigate, he was locked up and a charge of sending in false fire-alarms was preferred against him.

Egged on by the violent and incendiary press, the local real estate dealers and other capitalists and members of the M. and M. formed themselves into vigilance committees and mob law was instituted. With the connivance and open aid of the police, bands of semi-disguised ruffians, appeared nightly at the police station, from whence, at the dead of night automobile loads of prisoners, industrial unionists, trades unionists in good standing, Socialists, and some with no affiliation, were carried from twenty to thirty miles into the hills and there beaten, clubbed, kicked while helpless on the ground and left with bloody heads and bruised bodies and with threats of death should they return. But return they did, to make affidavits of their persecutions.

[Martyr Michael Hoey]

March 28 died Michael Hoey, the first martyr of the San Diego battle. An old man, was Michael, but in perfect health, having walked 140 miles to the seat of war from Imperial Valley in the space of 5½ days. Kicked in the stomach and groin by a policeman, Hoey complained continually of pain in the swelling on his side but was laughed at by the official physician, Dr. Magee, until Hoey was removed from the jail and taken to Agnew Hospital by the Free Speech League, remaining there until his death. He was cared for by Dr. Leon De Ville, a Socialist, and a devoted soldier of the revolution.

[The Funeral of Michael Hoey]

The following Saturday, March 29, sorrowing fellow-battlers of Michael Hoey’s gathered on a vacant lot where, under the pitying smile of sunny California’s blue sky, they paid their last respects to the fallen hero of labor’s struggle. Waving sadly over his bier was the red flag, the emblem of brotherhood for which Michael Hoey had offered up his life. Not an insignia of violence and hatred, as conceived in the maggot-eaten brains of hired murderers and prostituted “journalists,” but a token of peace and love. And then-ah, well is this article entitled “The Shame of San Diego”-then Harvey Sheppard, a minion of armed and brutal violence, invaded the sanctity of their victim’s funeral and wrested the banner of brotherhood from the hands of the unresisting workingman who bore it, and placed the bearer under arrest! As I write all this I am seized with a feeling that the readers will deem that my story is an exaggeration. But the official organ of the trades-unionists, the Labor Leader, and the Weekly Herald, an independent, profit-making sheet, will fully verify my tale.

Vincent St. John, secretary-treasurer of the I. W. W., has published a reward of five thousand dollars for the conviction of those who were the cause of Hoey’s death.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The Shame of San Diego” by Hartwell S. Shippey, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: Michael Hoey, Martyr of San Diego Free Speech Fight, Funeral Oration by Laura Payne Emerson

Janet RayeFree Speech Fights
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Quote Laura Payne Emerson Make This Hell a Heaven, Ind Pnr p12, Mar 1921—————

Hellraisers Journal –  Friday April 12, 1912
Farewell Tribute for Michael Hoey, Martyr of San Diego Free Speech Fight

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of April 11, 1912:

IWW San Diego FSF, Michael Hoey Martyr, IW p1, Apr 11, 1912

——-

MICHAEL HOEY–MARTYR

(By Laura Payne Emerson).

Fellow Workers: I count it an honor to be accorded the privilege of paying a tribute, on this occasion, to our martyred dead fellow-worker, Michael Hoey. He was a soldier in the war for industrial freedom. Early in life he joined the forces that were making for better conditions for his class, the working class, and to the day when he fell mortally wounded, and was carried from the field of battle, never did he falter.

It was in San Diego, Cal. A fight for free speech was on. An infamous ordinance had been passed by the common council denying the natural and constitutional right of free speech and public assembly to certain citizens. Many brave souls had undertaken to test the odious law by attempting to speak on the streets, and had met the policeman’s club and the jail. Among those on the fire line in that contest was Michael Hoey, a man sixty-three years of age. When told by a friend that he was too old to enlist in such a fight, and that he should leave it to younger and more vigorous men, he replied:

I have nothing to give but myself and life is not worth living
when all liberty is gone.

That night, amid a cheering crowd, his fine face appeared for a moment, while his voice was raised in a last appeal to his class to stand firm for human rights! Then!! Burly guardians of the law snatched him down, and with kicks and clubs, jail and starvation, silenced his voice forever.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Michael Hoey, Martyr of San Diego Free Speech Fight, Funeral Oration by Laura Payne Emerson” →

Hellraisers Journal: Jack Sellins, Seeks Justice for His Mother, Martyred Mine Workers’ Organizer, Fannie Sellins

Janet RayeFannie Sellins
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Quote M. Robbins, for Fannie Sellins, Wkrs Wld p4, Nov 28, 1919—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday April 2, 1922
Jack Sellins Seeks Justice for Murder of Fannie Sellins and Joseph Starzeleski

From the United Mine Workers Journal of April 1, 1922:

 

SON SEEKS JUSTICE
———-

ASKS THAT SLAYER OF HIS MOTHER,
MRS. FANNIE SELLINS,
BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE
———

WNF Sellins Starzeleski Monument, The Woman Today p9, Sept 1936

Editor of the Journal: I am writing you concerning the bringing to justice the persons responsible for the death of Fannie Sellins and Joseph Starzeleski, who were murdered in wanton cold blood over two and a half years ago.

For this length of time every effort has been made to find the persons responsible for this crime, and on January 26, last, three deputy sheriffs were arrested for the murder. Even on the information on which the arrests were made the court granted them their liberty on bail, which was only $2,500. However, on February 14, the grand jury returned an indictment against the three, and we are now waiting for a date for the trial to be set.

The three men indicted are: Edward Mannison, John Pierson and James Reilly, former deputy sheriffs.

A copy of a resolution is herewith enclosed asking that the two attorneys we have employed be appointed as special district attorneys. I would like to see this resolution adopted by local unions over the country and be sent to president judge of the Allegheny County courts.

Fraternally yours,
JACK SELLINS.

The writer of the above is a son of Mrs. Fannie Sellins, so brutally murdered by deputy sheriffs in the Brackenridge mine strike. He has had a heroic effort to have the slayers of his mother brought to justice, and says he is taking no chance of a failure of prosecution in the hands of the district attorney’s office.

The resolution is as follows:

Whereas, The District Attorney of Allegheny County has failed to proceed with the prosecution of the murderers of Fannie Sellins and Joseph Starzeleski, or to take any action to bring these offenders to trial, said murders having been committed at West Natrona, Pa., on Aug. 26, 1919;

Be it Resolved, That we believe that private counsel should be employed for that purpose, and that the court be asked to appoint two attorneys as special deputy district attorneys to take charge of said prosecution, and, further, we recommend that the court appoint John S. Robb, Jr., Esq., of Pittsburgh, Pa., and Victor B. Benton, Esq., of New Kensington, Pa., as such special deputy district attorneys, and that a copy of this resolution be mailed to the president judge of Allegheny County courts.

—————

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Jack Sellins, Seeks Justice for His Mother, Martyred Mine Workers’ Organizer, Fannie Sellins” →