Scholars explore Ludlow Massacre on its centennial

"Re-collecting Ludlow," a panel discussion to commemorate the launch of the Colorado Coal Digital Collection, will take place on Tuesday, April 15 from 4:30 to 6:00pm in the Norlin Library on the University of Colorado Boulder campus.

The event coincides with the centennial of the Ludlow Massacre and offers participants an opportunity to explore this watershed in labor history from several disciplinary perspectives.

The panel speakers include Thomas Andrews, 2009 Bancroft Prize winning author of Killing for Coal; Ron McMahan, Western mining history documentarian; and Dean J. Saitta, Co-Director of the Colorado Coal Field War Archaeological Project.  The program is free and open to the public.

The event will incorporate sources from the soon to be launched Colorado Coal Digital Collection (https://content.cu.edu/digitallibrary/), a free online resource consisting of approximately 100 videos, transcripts, and more than 4,000 images that chronicle the history of coal mining in the Western United States from immigration and daily life in the coal camps to labor conditions and strikes.

McMahan and Eric Margolis amassed the source material for this collection in the late 1970s, when they were conducting field research as a part of their graduate studies. From 1974 to 1979, they collected photographs and conducted video and audio interviews of retired coal miners, many of whom had witnessed major labor history events such as the Ludlow and Columbine Mine Massacres. McMahan and Margolis received major funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to turn excerpts of these interviews into a three-part documentary that was later aired to a national audience on PBS.

In 2013, the CU-Boulder Libraries undertook a project to digitize these materials, thanks to a generous grant by Ron and Jane McMahan.

The panel discussion and digital collection launch were timed to coincide with the 100^th anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre. Described as "a pivotal event in American history" on the monument that marks the site 12 miles northwest of Trinidad, Colorado, the Ludlow Massacre was the culmination of a widespread strike against Colorado coal mines, which resulted in the violent deaths of 19-26 people, including women and children, when the Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel and Iron Company camp guards attacked a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow.

Battles continued for 10 days from Trinidad to Walsenburg, resulting in a final death toll estimated from 69 to 199. These events fueled one of the reports issued in 1916 by the United States Commission on Industrial Relations calling for “industrial democracy.”

Andrews, associate professor, University of Colorado Boulder, is the author of  Killing for Coal, awarded the 2009 Bancroft Prize by Columbia University, one of the most coveted honors in the field of history. His work has also been featured in the “New York Times” and “Denver Post.”

McMahan received his PhD in 1978 from the University of Colorado Boulder Institute of Behavioral Science.  He directed the documentary: Out of the Depths, Redux: Coal Mining and Coal Wars in their Own Voices.

Saitta is professor and chair of the anthropology department at the University of Denver.  Between 1997 and 2004 he co-directed the Colorado Coal Field War Archaeological Project, a Colorado State Historic Fund supported project dedicated to better understanding events related to the 1913-14 Colorado Coal Field strike including the Ludlow Massacre.  This research culminated in 2009 with the designation of the Ludlow Tent Colony as a National Historical Landmark.

For more information, contact Holley Long at Holley.Long@colorado.edu or 303-492-7513.

April 2014