Celebration & Sorrow

At the Ludlow tent colony, a Greek Orthodox Easter celebration on April 19, 1914, brought the entire colony together with some militiamen for a feast, dancing, singing, and a baseball game, even as escalating tensions had kept the state militia stationed on Water Tank Hill to watch the strikers. The next morning, around 9 a.m., an explosion touched off an exchange of gunfire between miners and militia that continued through the day. Armed miners defended their positions while women and children sheltered in the tents until they could flee, and when a train stopped between the two sides that afternoon, the pause in shooting allowed most of them to escape into the surrounding hills. At dusk, the militia entered the camp and burned the tents in one of the darkest episodes in American labor history.

Colorado · United States