The Lattimer Massacre

On September tenth, eighteen ninety-seven, several hundred immigrant coal miners set out on foot from Harwood toward the Lattimer colliery, marching peacefully for higher wages and equal treatment. They were Polish, Slovak, and Lithuanian workers, unarmed, carrying no weapons. When they reached Lattimer, Luzerne County sheriff James Martin ordered them to stop. They kept walking. The deputies opened fire.

Nineteen men were killed. Dozens more were wounded. The sheriff and his deputies were tried for murder and acquitted. The massacre shocked labor organizers across the country and accelerated recruitment in the anthracite coalfields, helping fuel the massive United Mine Workers strike of nineteen hundred two. Most of the dead were buried at Saint Stanislaus Cemetery in Hazleton. The Lattimer Massacre remains one of the bloodiest episodes in the long, brutal history of American labor.