Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones
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Thursday December 24, 1914
News from Michigan's Copper Country: All Is Quiet in Calumet This Christmas
Copper Strikers March in the Snow in Hancock, Michigan, February 1914
From today's Chicago Day Book:
PRE-CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES FEW AT CALUMET
Calumet, Mich., Dec. 24.-There were few pre-Christmas festivities in Calumet or the copper country to-day. Memory of the awful disaster of a year ago, when the lives of 73 persons were crushed out in a wild panic that followed a false cry of fire during a miners' Christmas eve entertainment in Italian hall, Red Jacket, served to bring the decision for the elimination of all public ceremony this year. Not even a memorial service for those who perished was planned and the local newspapers made no mention whatever of the first "anniversary" of the great calamity. The one purpose was to forget.
But the memory lingers and is intensified by awful suffering among many miners' families for lack of food and clothing. Poverty and destitution are widespread throughout the copper country. Hundreds of miners who suffered throughout the long copper strike and have never been able to find employment since are in dire need. Other hundreds are the innocent victims of the curtailment of the mining industry, made necessary as a result of the European war.
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SOURCE
The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Dec 24, 1914
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGE
Strikers March in Hancock in Snow, Feb 1914
http://coppercountry.wordpress.com/...
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AFTER THE STRIKE
The Italian Hall Memorial is lit with candles every Christmas Eve.
Annie Clemenc
By April 12, 1914, Annie was separated from her husband, Joe Clemenc. She married Frank Shaw, the editor of
Proletarec (Proletarian) on September 16, 1914. Their daughter, Darwina, was born on October 16th of that year. They made their home in Chicago and were active in in the Slovenian-America Left movement. Sadly, the marriage was not a happy one, and ended in separation when Annie refused to put up with her husband's abuse.
Darwina later married and gave Annie two grandchildren, Patricia and Robert Stauber. Darwina (Dot) and her husband were divorced after a few unhappy years of marriage, and she and her children lived with Annie thereafter. Many happy photographs survive of Annie with her grandchildren.
Annie became the co-owner of a hat cleaning business, a business which managed to survive the great depression. There is a photograph of Annie standing beside a 1936 Dodge D-2 sedan which she apparently owned.
Annie died in Chicago on July 27, 1956 of cancer. In 2013 "Big Annie" Clemenc-Shaws was inducted into Labor's International Hall of Fame.
In 1986 her brother, Frank Klobuchar, described how the Italian Hall Massacre had affected Annie:
She never was the same after the tragedy of the strike and the Italian Hall. She never forgave. She didn't like to talk about the strike and the Italian Hall disaster. It was a real sore spot with her. But she always thought it was the Citizens Alliance that was responsible. She said, "I was there. I know what happened." You know how soldiers are about the war? How they saw such horrible things that they just won't talk about it. Well, that's how Annie was. She didn't want to talk about it.
Note: the Citizens Alliance was an anti-union vigilante organization sponsored by the mine operators.
The Striking Copper Miners
Many of strikers, members of the Western Federation of Miners, were unable to return to work in the Michigan copper mines after the strike. Many of them moved to Detroit, including members of Annie's family and her ex-husband, Joe Clemenc.
Some of those refugees from Michigan's Copper Country went on to help build the powerful United Auto Workers Union. We can imagine that their experience in the Michigan Copper Strike of 1913-14 was good preparation for the great strikes of the 1930's. Perhaps some of them were present at Flint in 1937 when the strikers marched out of the occupied auto factories, victorious.
SOURCES
Annie Clemenc
& the Great Keweenaw Copper Strike
-by Lyndon Comstock
NC, 2013
https://books.google.com/...
Death's Door
The Truth Behind the Italian Hall Disaster
and the Strike of 1913, Second Edition
by Steve Lehto
MI, 2013
http://www.superiorreading.com/...
http://momentumbooks.com/...
Note: There is no better book than this one on the Italian Hall Massacre. Steve Lehto has brought to life the voices of those who were attending the Christmas party for the strikers' children and saw and heard the man wearing the button of the Citizen's Alliance when he entered the hall and raised the false alarm of fire. The testimony of witnesses who were actually there and saw what happened first hand are meticulously documented by Lehto. He also describes how their voices have since been muted by the verdict of the company-controlled coroner's jury, the company-owned newspapers of the day, and certain labor historians who seem to regard these company-dominated sources as equal to the voices of direct witnesses, who were, of course, not owned, controlled, or dominated by the copper companies, but were in a state of rebellion at the time of the massacre.
From the scaffold, Albert Parsons shouted, "Let the voice of the people be heard." Mr. Lehto makes heard the voices of the strikers and their families who took on the powerful copper companies during the Michigan Copper Strike of 1913-14. And that is a great gift to the entire Labor Movement.
I want to thank Mr. Lehto for sending me a signed copy of the second edition of his book. I will treasure it always.
See also:
"Anti-Capitalist Meet-Up:
Annie Clemenc and the Italian Hall Massacre"
-by JayRay
http://www.dailykos.com/...
IMAGES
Italian Hall Memorial on Christmas Eve
http://britacarolineblog.com/...
Note: check out this link for the story
of how one family survived the Italian Hall Massacre!
Annie with her flag
http://thelaborhalloffame.org/...
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1937 Sitdown Strike - Dan Hall
And what they earned when spirits burned
Was passed today to me [and you.]
-David O Norris & Dan Hall
WE NEVER FORGET
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11:21 AM PT: Also check out this article, published today, by Steve Lehto:
"Remember Italian Hall: Where 73 Died On Christmas Eve"
http://oppositelock.jalopnik.com/...