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WE NEVER FORGET
Fannie Sellins & Joe Starzeleski
Who Lost Their Lives in Freedom’s Cause
August 26, 1919 at West Natrona, Pennsylvania
From The Woman Today of September 1936:
Fannie Sellins
-by Lillian Henry
Gold flows down the Alleghany [Allegheny] and Monongahela Rivers and up the Ohio river to coffers in tall buildings in downtown Pittsburgh. There is a steady stream from the coal mines and steel mills-from the coal mines and the steel mills-from the plants of Jones and Laughlin, Bethlehem Steel, Carnegie, U. S. Steel, Alleghany Steel, Alleghany Valley Coal. These and many other sources fill the banks and strong boxes in Pittsburgh.
Blood has flowed along these rivers-shed at the command of the owners of the strong boxes in tall buildings, and one of their victims was Fannie Sellins, mother of four children.
Fannie Sellins’ grave stands in New Kensington on the Alleghany River. The tombstone, erected by the United Mine Workers of District No. 5, stands as a monument to those “killed by the enemies of organized labor”.
We went to see Fannie Sellins’ daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Broad, to learn about the life of this heroic woman.
[Said the former
Dorothy Sellins:]My father died when I was two years old, and mother went to work in a garment factory in St. Louis to support her four children. We all come from the South.
Grandfather was a painter-had a regular job painting Mississippi River boats. He used to take mother and the children around to union meetings. I’ve heard union talk ever since I was a baby.
Mother worked hard to organize, not only the men, but also their women. She used to go around to the women to tell them how important it was for them to organize. She was jailed for six months in West Virginia for doing that.
The year 1919 found Fannie in the Alleghany Valley near Pittsburgh. The little family had moved to New Kensington. Dorothy had married Fred Broad, who later secured relief for 212 miners of Russelton, and prevented their eviction by the Republic Iron and Steel Company for non-payment of rent. Fannie was continuing her work as organizer for the United Mine Workers of America.
The workers of the Alleghany Valley Coal Company, were out on strike. Fannie was tireless in encouraging the workers, advising, and assisting in relief work. She did much to keep up the good spirits of the miners and their families and to rally the men to the union banner.
The coal company became desperate. Special guards were deputized-the “coal and iron police”-and equipped with guns, clubs and other weapons, they set about to institute a reign of terror.
August 26, 1919, is well remembered by the workers of the Alleghany Valley. On the morning of that day, Fannie Sellins rode into Pittsburgh to buy a birthday present for her grandson, the son of Dorothy and Fred Broad. The gift, a toy pony, is one of the most cherished possessions of the family today, Dorothy told us.
Fannie returned to New Kensington on the afternoon of that day, and left almost at once to answer a call across the river at West Natrona. There she found the armed guards of the coal company clubbing and shooting Joe Starzeleski, a miner. Fannie rushed in to get some children out of the way, and was herself clubbed and felled. Not content, the deputy fired a few shots into her body as she lay there, and then crushed her skull with a club.
A long legal fight ensued to bring the murderer to trial, but the attitude of the coal and steel dominated court may be gauged from the report of Samuel C. Jamison, then coroner of Alleghany County, and “six good and lawful men of the county aforesaid” who were “sworn and charged to inquire…when, where and how the said Fannie Sellins came to her death.”
They found that death was due to “gun shot wound in left temple from gun in the hands of person or persons unknown to the jury….
“And…the jury find death…was justifiable and in self-defense and also recommend hat Sheriff Haddock be commended in his prompt and successful action in protecting property and persons in that vicinity and the judgment exercised in the selection of his deputies. We also criticize and deplore the action of alien and foreign agitators who instill anarchy and bolshevism doctrines into the minds of un-Americans and uneducated aliens.”
Fannie Sellins still lives in the hearts of the workers of the Alleghany Valley. This year a huge memorial will have taken place by the time this story appears in print. The workers from Andrew Mellon’s Aluminum Company of America, the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, the coal miners and the steel mills of the Alleghany Valley will meet, thousands strong, at Tarentum on August 26, to pay respect to Fannie’s memory and to pledge that they will organize so strongly that such murders will not happen again.
[Emphasis added.]
From The Great Steel Strike by William Z. Foster:
Mrs. Fannie Sellins was an organizer for the United Mine Workers of America, stationed in the notorious, anti-union Black Valley district along the Allegheny river. An able speaker, and possessed of boundless courage, energy, enthusiasm and idealism, she was a most effective worker. Due largely to her efforts many thousands of miners and miscellaneous workers in this hard district were organized. She was the very heart of the local labor movement, which ranked second to none in Pennsylvania for spirit and progress. When the steel campaign began, Mrs. Sellins threw herself wholeheartedly into it. She worked indefatigably. More than any other individual she was responsible for the unionization of the big United States Steel Corporation mills at Vandergrift, Leechburgh and New Kensington, as well as those of the so-called independent Allegheny and West Penn Steel Companies at Brackenridge. The results secured by her will compare favorably with those of any other organizer in the whole campaign.
By her splendid work in behalf of the toilers Mrs. Sellins gained the undying hatred of the untamed employers in the benighted Black Valley district. Open threats were made to “get” her. The opportunity came on August 26, 1919, when she was deliberately murdered under the most brutal circumstances.
The miners of the Allegheny Coal and Coke Company were on strike at West Natrona. The mine is situated in the mill yard of the Allegheny Steel Company and furnishes fuel for that concern. All was going peacefully when a dozen drunken deputy sheriffs on strike duty, led by a mine official, suddenly rushed the pickets, shooting as they came. Joseph Strzelecki [Starzeleski] fell, mortally wounded. Mrs. Sellins, standing close by, rushed first to get some children out of danger. Then she came back to plead with the deputies, who were still clubbing the prostrate Strzelecki, not to kill him. What happened then is told in the New Majority (Chicago) of September 20:
—– —–, the mine official, snatched a club and felled the woman to the ground.
This was not on company ground, but just outside the fence of a friend of Mrs. Sellins.
She rose and tried to drag herself toward the gate.
—– shouted: “Kill that — — — — — —!”
Three shots were fired, each taking effect.
She fell to the ground, and he cried: “Give her another!”
One of the deputies, standing over the motionless and silent body, held his gun down and, without averting his face, fired into the body that did not move.
An auto truck, in waiting, was hurried to the scene and the body of the old miner thrown in; then Mrs. Sellins was dragged by the heels to the back of the car. Before she was placed in the truck, a deputy took a cudgel and crushed in her skull before the eyes of the throng of men, women and children, who stood in powerless silence before the armed men. Deputy —– picked up the woman’s hat, placed it on his head, danced a step, and said to the crowd: “I’m Mrs. Sellins now.”
Thus perished noble Fannie Sellins: shot in the back by so-called peace officers. And she 49 years old, a grandmother, and mother of a boy killed in France, fighting to make the world safe for democracy.
Many people witnessed this horrible murder. The guilty men were named openly in the newspapers and from a hundred platforms. Yet no one was ever punished for the crime. Witnesses were spirited away or intimidated, and the whole matter hushed up in true Steel Trust fashion. A couple of deputies were arrested; but they were speedily released on smaller bonds than those often set for strikers arrested for picketing. Eventually they were freed altogether.
The killing of Mrs. Sellins, right in the teeth of the strike as it was, lent much bitterness to the general situation. Rightly or wrongly, the steel workers, almost to a man, felt that this devoted woman was a martyr to their cause.
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones, Pray for dead, Ab Chp 6, 1925
https://www.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/6
“Fannie Sellins” by Lillian Henry
-from
The Woman Today
(New York, New York)
-Sept 1936
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/wt/v1n07-sep-1936-women-today.pdf
The Great Steel Strike and Its Lessons
-by William Z Foster
NY, Huebsch, 1920
https://archive.org/details/greatsteelstrike00fostiala/page/n9
-pages 146-8 – re Fannie Sellins
https://archive.org/details/greatsteelstrike00fostiala/page/146
IMAGE
Monument for Sellins/Starzeleski, Woman Today p9, Sept 1936
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/wt/v1n07-sep-1936-women-today.pdf
See also:
For more on the Fannie Sellins/Joe Starzeleski Monument:
Note: many different spellings found for Joseph Starzeleski; for Tag, I use name as found on monument.
“Monument Raised Over Fannie Sellins’ Grave”
-from
The Butte Daily Bulletin of Sept 24, 1920
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045085/1920-09-21/ed-1/seq-6/
Photos of Historical Marker & Monument
-Posted by Progressive History of Pittsburgh
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.327510467405690.1073741826.155011934655545&type=3
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Text on Monument
Front:
In memory of Fannie Sellins and Joe Starzeleski
Killed by the enemies of organized labor
-near the Allegheny Steel & Coal Co.
-at West Natrona PA
Erected by the United Mine Workers of Dist. No. 5
Front at bottom:
They fell a victim to the lust of greed
They whose blood ran hot with labor’s need
They foully murdered Aug. 26, 1919.
Side:
Faithful ever to the cause of labor,
All of us deeply regret the fate you met.
Nobly you fought the fight against greed and gain
Never flinching with your efforts when the bullets came.
Immortal to the miners shall ever by they name;
Embellished in their hearts the sacrifice you made.
Side:
Great sister of the poor,
Your lips will speak no more
Of the imearsurable wrongs done to your kind,
For whom, a great white love you bore
But they shall hear us who are left behind
To storm the ramparts where you fell
And they shall know your voice among the toiling millions
When they at last rebel.
Pennsylvania Historical Marker
https://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-244
FindaGrave
Fannie Mooney Sellins (1872-1919)
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/29470046/fannie-sellins
Joseph Starzeleski (1865-1919)
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/29470504/joseph-starzeleski
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The Red Flag – Socialist Victory Choir
Lyrics by Jim Connell, 1889