Rossiter Strike Injunction

In the spring of nineteen twenty-seven, two hundred thousand bituminous coal miners across the country went on strike to protest wage reductions. In the small Pennsylvania mining town of Rossiter, the response from local courts was extraordinary. An Indiana County judge named Jonathan Langham issued an injunction so sweeping it prohibited striking miners from assembling in groups, marching through town, or even singing hymns on church lots across from the mine.

The injunction drew national outrage and a United States Senate inquiry that brought Senator Robert Wagner to Rossiter. Wagner, who had witnessed firsthand how courts were weaponized against organized labor, would go on to craft the National Labor Relations Act of nineteen thirty-five, the law that permanently guaranteed workers the right to organize. What happened in this small town helped change American labor law.