Ludlow Massacre site work reveals symbols lost for a century

[Omaha Steve]

United Mine Workers representative Bob Butero of Trinidad, stands at the bottom of the stairway inside the concrete-lined cellar where women and children suffocated during the 1914 Ludlow Massacre in Pueblo, Colo. (Shanna Lewis/KRCC News via AP)

By SHANNA LEWIS

PUEBLO, Colo. (AP) — The Ludlow Massacre more than a century ago was one of the most violent events in U.S. labor history and a wake-up call for the nation about brutal and often deadly coal mine work.

Recent preservation efforts at the site about an hour south of Pueblo have revealed symbols hidden for around a hundred years, KRCC-FM reports.

In 1914, southern Colorado coal miners were on strike to fight for safe working conditions and fair wages. On the day after their Greek Easter celebration, bullets flew through the sprawling United Mine Workers Ludlow tent colony. To escape the violence, four women and 11 children climbed into a hole dug in the ground beneath a tent. Then company thugs torched the encampment.

“My grandmother and another woman were the only two people who walked out of that pit alive,” Mary Elaine Petrucci told KRCC in 2014. She said the others suffocated in the dirt cellar as the tent colony burned.

FULL story: https://apnews.com/article/business-colorado-pueblo-2477baf5c7860e14cb3c9708a456ee53




Ludlow Monument was erected by the United Mine Workers of America.