Lattimer Massacre

On September tenth, eighteen ninety-seven, nearly four hundred immigrant coal miners marched peacefully along this road toward Lattimer. They were striking for higher wages and fairer treatment at the anthracite collieries of Luzerne County, most of them recent arrivals from Poland, Slovakia, and Lithuania. Luzerne County Sheriff James Martin met them here with a force of deputies.

Without warning, the deputies opened fire on the unarmed crowd. Nineteen men were killed. Thirty-eight more were wounded.

A jury later acquitted Sheriff Martin and his deputies of all charges. The massacre shocked immigrant communities across Pennsylvania and helped fuel the growth of the United Mine Workers, which would win its first major contract just four years later. The men who died here are still remembered as martyrs of the American labor movement.