LABOR HISTORY AT THE GROUND LEVEL
by Mark Walker
7 Men, 2 Women and 11 Children Killed by Deputized Mine Guards and National Guard Troops
​​One of the most dramatic labor struggles of twentieth-century U.S. history occurred in the southern coalfield of Colorado.
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The defining moment of this strike in popular con-
sciousness was the Ludlow Massacre of April 20, 1914, in which the Colorado National Guard killed over twenty people in an attack on a tent colony of striking coal miners. At the time, Ludlow galvanized American public opinion, but today it is a hidden history, or at least a small one, known only to a few.
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On April 20, 1914, four women and eleven children took refuge in a hole beneath a tent in the tent colony. The National Guard sometimes shot into the tents so the hole was dug to protect the children from gunfire. All of the children and two of the women died when the Colorado National Guard set the tents on fire, destroying the town and killing other inhabitants.
