Post by Tamrin on Sept 11, 2010 14:37:45 GMT 10
The Lattimer massacre is the violent death of 19 unarmed striking immigrant anthracite coal miners at the Lattimer mine near Hazleton, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 1897. The miners, mostly of Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian and German ethnicity, were shot and killed by a Luzerne County sheriff's posse. Scores more workers were wounded. The Lattimer massacre was a turning point in the history of the United Mine Workers (UMW).
Sheriff Martin and 73 deputies were arrested and put on trial. At trial, the defendants claimed that the marchers had refused to obey an order to disperse and were charging toward the sheriff and his deputies. But medical evidence that nearly all the strikers had been shot in the back proved this to be a lie. Nonetheless, the sheriff and his deputies were acquitted.
Lattimer marchers
It was not a battle because they were not aggressive,
nor were they defensive because they had no weapons
of any kind and were simply shot down like so many
worthless objects, each of the licensed life-takers
trying to outdo the others in butchery.
(Inscription on the Monument erected at Lattimer, 1972)
