1920 Alabama coal strike

Strike of United Mine Workers January 2026 February 2025 Alabama coal strike Walker County, Alabama September 7, 1920 – February 1921 Union organizing Strikes, Protest, Demonstrations Defeat for the union United Mine Workers of America Alabama State Militia John L. Lewis Thomas Kilby Deaths: 16+Injuries: Arrests: Deaths: 2Injuries: Arrests, etc The 1920 Alabama coal strike, or the Alabama miners' strike,http://norrit1.tripod.com/afl-cio/1920.htm 1920's was a statewide strike of the United Mine Workers of America against coal mine operators. The strike was marked by racial violence, and ended in significant defeat for the union and organized labor in Alabama.Feldman Glenn Labour Repression in the American South: Corporation, State, and Race in Alabama's Coal Fields, 1917-1921 The Historical Journal June 1994 37 2 349 10.1017/S0018246X00016502 2640206 161955836 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2640206 14 December 2021 subscription Conditions American Plan (union negotiations) UMW president John L. Lewis authorized the calling of a general strike on September 1,Strike Called in Alabama to Determine Whether Coal Operators Are Stronger Than Government United Mine Workers Journal September 15, 1920 XXXI 18 13 https://books.google.com/books?id=2hg5AQAAMAAJ&q=alabama 13 December 2021 and the strike formally began at midnight on September 8. As many as 15,000 of the 27,000 coal miners in the state stopped work.Tindall 1995 337Foner 1991 228 UMW vice-president Van Bittner was sent to the state to oversee the effort.Letwin Daniel The Challenge of Interracial Unionism 1998 https://books.google.com/books?id=JKsIwR6QgBoC The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill, N.C 9780807823774 186 13 December 2021 The main union demands were union recognition, and that the operators put into effect the wage award decided by the Bituminous Coal Commission earlier in the year.President Lewis Urges President Wilson to Take Legal Action to Compel Observance of Principle of Collective Bargaining by Alabama Operators United Mine Workers Journal November 1, 1920 XXXI 21 3 https://books.google.com/books?id=2hg5AQAAMAAJ 14 December 2021 One obstacle to union recognition, was animosity to the union due to the UMW's racial integration.Woodrum 2007 13 Popular opinion in Alabama was turned against the strikers almost immediately, particularly the disapproving black middle class, who saw racial solidarity and cooperation with capitalists as their only route to economic self-defense.Kelly 2001 174 Coal operators launched a propaganda campaign to divide the union along racial lines. A pro-employer newspaper called the Workmen’s Chronicle was distributed free of cost to mine workers. It was published by a black minister named P. C. Rameau who worked out of an office in the TCI building. Oscar W. Adams Sr., editor of the Birmingham Reporter, spoke to workers in company-owned halls, imploring them to remain loyal to mine owners.Davis Colin John Brown Edwin L. It is union and liberty : Alabama coal miners and the UMW 1999 University of Alabama Press 9780817309992 58–59 https://books.google.com/books?id=-Ni6AAAAIAAJ 14 December 2021 Major operators in Alabama's coalfields were also still using convict labor with no salary cost whatsoever, the convict leasing system, described by some as "Slavery by Another Name". Mines of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company had phased out convict leasing five years after its acquisition by U.S. Steel, but the mines controlled by Sloss Furnaces and Pratt Consolidated continued the practice until 1926.February 2024 The strike The strike's first major confrontation happened on September 16, in Patton Junction, Alabama (in Walker County), where strikers killed the general manager of the Corona Coal Company, Leon Adler, along with Earl Edgil, a deputy sheriff.Rothermel J. Fisher Strikers Pitch Camp https://www.newspapers.com/clip/90619189/strikers-pitch-camp-p2/ 15 December 2021 The Birmingham News XXXIII 188 September 17, 1920 Birmingham, Alabama 2 Newspapers.com But African Americans bore the brunt of the violence: among many such threatening incidents, black miner Henry Junius was found in a shallow grave outside of Roebuck a few weeks into the strike. At least thirteen houses of strikebreakers were dynamited between September and December.Lewis 2009 60 Also in December, state troopers terrorized the small black business district in Pratt City with random machine gun fire.Kelly 2001 187 The Alabama State Militia and the state police had been called out by the governor, Thomas Kilby, known as the "business governor".Thomas Erby Kilby https://archives.alabama.gov/govs_list/g_kilbyt.html https://web.archive.org/web/20150105044044/http://www.archives.alabama.gov/govs_list/g_kilbyt.html dead January 5, 2015 Alabama Department of Archives and History 19 November 2021 February 7, 2014 Once on site, state troop commanders typically placed themselves at the service of the coal companies.Kelly 2001 178 By February, thousands of workers had been evicted from their company houses and left homeless.Foner 1991 229 Towards the end of February, the enormous expense of conducting the strike with no progress led the union to seek a resolution. None other than Governor Kilby was accepted as arbitrator. Kilby's settlement flatly refused union recognition and any wage increases, and he refused to reinstate striking miners. Part of Kilby's March 9 decision read: It is rather difficult to understand how such a large number of men could be induced so deliberately to disregard such an obligation of honor. The only explanation, perhaps, lies in the fact that from 70 per cent to 80 per cent of the miners are Negroes. The southern Negro is easily misled, especially when given a permanent and official place in an organization in which both races are members.Chenery William L. Kellogg Paul U. The Alabama Coal Settlement The Survey April 9, 1921 XLVI 52 https://books.google.com/books?id=vaIqAAAAMAAJ 19 November 2021 Survey Associates Inc. New York The national UMW chose to adhere to Kilby's decision. After the strike ended union advances stagnated; by the end of the decade, the UMW would close its state offices.Woodrum 2007 48Tindall 1995 337 At least 16 people were killed in the strike, more than half of them black, with an uncounted number of wounded.Lewis 2009 61 Willie Baird On December 22, 1920, local union official and itinerant Nazarine minister Adrian Northcutt of Nauvoo, Alabama was summoned out of his home by soldiers of Company M of the Alabama National Guard. After hearing seven shots fired in quick succession, Northcutt's son-in-law William (Willie) Baird rushed out to find Northcutt, dead on the ground, with Private James Morris standing over him. Baird shot Morris in self-defense, then fled into the woods. After three days, Baird turned himself over to Walker County officials. On January 5, nine guardsmen of Company M entered the jail, subdued the sheriff on duty, lynched Baird, and riddled his body with bullets.Kelly 2001 196 The guardsmen were eventually acquitted. Former Alabama governor Braxton Bragg Comer would claim that the lynching of Baird "had some element of self-defense in it."Kelly 2001 196 See also List of worker deaths in United States labor disputes UMW General coal strike (1922) References Works cited Kelly Brian Race, Class, and Power in the Alabama Coalfields, 1908-21 2001 University of Illinois Press Urbana 9780252069338 Lewis Ronald L. Black coal miners in America : race, class, and community conflict, 1780-1980 2009 University Press of Kentucky Lexington, Kentucky 9780813192741 Foner Philip S. History of the labor movement in the United States 1991 International Publishers New York 9, The T.U.E.L. to the end of the Gompers Era 9780717806744 Tindall George B. The emergence of the New South 1913-1945 1995 Louisiana State University Press Baton Rouge, Louisiana 9780807100202 Woodrum Robert H. "Everybody was black down there" : race and industrial change in the Alabama coalfields 2007 University of Georgia Press Athens 9780820328799 Category:1920 labor disputes and strikes Category:1920 in Alabama Category:1921 in Alabama Category:Society of Appalachia Category:Anti-union violence in the United States Category:Coal Wars Category:Labor disputes led by the United Mine Workers of America Category:Mining in Alabama Category:Lynching deaths in Alabama Category:Riots and civil disorder in Alabama Category:Protests in Alabama Category:Labor disputes in Alabama Category:White American lynching victims Category:African-American lynching victims Category:Mass lynchings Category:Racially motivated violence against African Americans in Alabama Category:Labor-related riots in the United States Category:Mass shootings in Alabama Category:Police brutality in the United States Category:Attacks on buildings and structures in the 1920s Category:Residential building bombings in the United States Category:1920s mass shootings in the United States Category:Attacks on shops in the United States Category:1920 murders in the United States Category:1921 murders in the United States Category:1920s strikes in the United States Category:1920s mass murders in the United States