A stand off that did not end well

Deborah Mendez Wilson writes about an important upcoming date in Colorado.

April 20. In recent years, the date has come to symbolize marijuana legalization. For some Coloradans, it's a day to mourn the 13 people who were killed at Columbine High School in 1999.

But I'll always remember April 20 for another reason: In 1914, more than 20 people — including 11 children and two women — died in Ludlow in one of the most infamous chapters of Colorado history.

Even now, Ludlow continues to stir imaginations because of the players involved. They included the powerful Rockefeller family, which owned the Colorado Fuel and Iron Co. (CFI), which was the largest coal operator in the West; the United Mine Workers of America; the Baldwin-Felts and Pinkerton detective agencies; President Woodrow Wilson; legendary labor leader Mary Harris "Mother" Jones; Colorado Gov. Elias M. Ammons; and Texas Rangers, who were imported to guard coal mines.

Far less mentioned in this historical drama, however, are the miners and their families whose names reflect the rich ethnic diversity of people who helped build this country brick by brick. Among them were Bartolotti, Costa, Fyler, Pedregón, Petrucci, Rubino, Snyder, Tikas, Ullman and Valdez.

They were Italian, Greek and Slovenian immigrants who fled wars and hardship in Europe.

They were Hispanos who had lived in Colorado and New Mexico since at least the mid-1800s.

They were Mexican immigrants fleeing the Mexican Revolution.

They were Chinese-Americans looking for a better life.

They were skilled British colliers who brought their expertise to the Americas.

All staked their futures in the United States. Many encountered squalor and bigotry. Together, they extracted the "buried sunshine" — coal — that fueled the trains that hauled the coal that fed the mills that produced the steel that built the bridges, buildings, factories and homes that industrialized the West.

In the bowels of the earth, coal dust covered them and erased their accents, languages and ethnic backgrounds. Their stories are quintessential American stories.

The miners' plight — set in a milieu of turn-of-the-century innovation, discovery and global unrest — spurred them to fight for fair wages, eight-hour work days, health and safety regulations, the right to live where they wanted, eat where they wanted, and to see the doctor of their choice. They also wanted coal companies to recognize collective bargaining, believing unions best represented the working man's interests.

When miners in 1914 went on strike, coal operators evicted them from company-owned homes. Determined to stand their ground, 1,200 miners and their families pitched tents at Ludlow on the plains east of the Spanish Peaks — the Wahatoyas, as the Ute called them — and those ancient mountains bore witness to what remains the deadliest labor dispute in U.S. history, according to University of Colorado history Professor Thomas G. Andrews.

On the morning of April 20, 1914, a gun battle erupted between miners and Colorado soldiers. At least seven miners died defending their families (the number varies). But it was the bodies of 11 children and two women, one of them reportedly pregnant, in a pit beneath a tent that drew public outrage.

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