Deviant Criminology
Dr. Richard Weaver Jr., Heather Kenney, and Rachel Czar take listeners on a journey through the world of true crime. With their unique careers in the criminal justice and academic world; they work to provide an entertaining and educational experience for listeners. This podcast examines many areas of true crime including; the formation of laws, cases that defined caselaw, and crimes that impacted the world. Please join us on this journey as we transition from professionals in criminal justice and academia to budding podcasters.
Deviant Criminology
The Colorado Coal Field Wars: The Ludlow Massacre
The episode unearths the tragic story of the Ludlow Massacre, drawing connections between past labor struggles and the contemporary fight for workers' rights. It highlights the desperate conditions faced by miners and their families, ultimately leading to a violent confrontation that reshaped labor relations in the United States.
• Overview of the Colorado Coal Field Wars
• Unsafe mining conditions and high fatality rates
• Demands for better wages and working conditions
• The role of company towns in controlling miners
• The arrival of the National Guard and its alignment with corporate interests
• The violent outbreak of the Ludlow Massacre on April 20, 1914
• The aftermath and impact of the massacre
• Legal ramifications and trials that followed
• Changes initiated by Rockefeller in response to public backlash
• Continuing relevance of the Ludlow Massacre in today's labor movements
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Speaker 2:Okay, so welcome to another episode of Deviant Criminology. I am one of your hosts, Richard Weaver.
Speaker 3:Heather Kenney.
Speaker 2:And we're going to go this week with another. I have no idea what we're talking about. So, heather, you have brought together a lovely case that you were going to present to me, and I am going to give sidebar commentary.
Speaker 3:So this actually is a case that I probably should have learned about when I was younger and I did not. I came across this information during a time when I was driving back and forth from Colorado Springs down to Albuquerque on a regular basis, and if you've ever driven that stretch of road, there's places where there's absolutely nothing. You can't see a single light as far as the eye can see, and the stars are incredible and it's beautiful and it's wonderful. So don't don't take that as a negative. I love those areas.
Speaker 2:The opposite of driving through Kansas, which is just nothing. Yes, yes.
Speaker 3:Beautiful mountain, sunset stars the whole bit and somewhere along that road that drive there was a sign about Ludlow massacre and I was like road that drive, there was a sign about.
Speaker 3:Ludlow Massacre and I was like that sounds kind of important, kind of big. So eventually I googled it and when I read through what happened I was like wow, this is something pretty significant. I probably should have known about this. But it relates to the Colorado Coal Field Wars and specifically from September 1913 to about May of 1914, these events were going on and it ended when President Woodrow Wilson sent in federal soldiers to end it.
Speaker 2:This is like well before what's known more as the Harlan Coal Mine Wars and stuff like that, which were the 1920s and 30s.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is like a pre-Crawl Okay. Yeah, so this would have been before that Pecan interest, which I think that's the stuff that you like, that which are the 1920s and 30s. This is like a pre-Crawl. Okay, yeah, so this would have been before that Peacemakers, which I think that's the stuff that you're more familiar with. Yes, yes.
Speaker 3:So in this war, depending on whose information you look at, somewhere between 70 and 200 people were killed. Cool, I'm sure that people have different ways of counting who was impacted and I'm sure, like so many of these types of events, some people are important enough to count and other people are not.
Speaker 2:And it also depends on who hid the bodies better Exactly. That's one thing you see. A lot in coal mining fields is people just went missing.
Speaker 3:Yes, they were never found.
Speaker 2:So it was always reported like well, they moved or they transferred or yeah Right, they must have moved on to some other job yes, yes, by moving on to a heavenlier place, I guess it's especially easier then, because you couldn't track people down.
Speaker 3:There wasn't facebook or oh yeah internet searches or any of that?
Speaker 3:nope. So prior to the cold field wars there were other strikes, um, mostly miners for silver and gold. So that's an important context before it. Just because some of the players from that conflict carried over into this conflict. So people already brought some baggage from prior conflicts into this one. So it wasn't like this was a brand new thing where nobody had had any interest before, just some background. In 1910, so this would have been shortly before this strike war started 1910, the coal mining in Colorado employed about 16,000 people, which at that point were about 10% of the jobs in the state. In 1912, the death rate for Colorado mines was about 7.06 per 1,000 workers. The national rate was 3.15 per thousand, so more than double for these mining areas, mining towns. Just in 1913 alone 110 men died for in Colorado, so significant number of people.
Speaker 2:It sounds like a very. I mean, it's always coal mining and any type of mining has always been classified as dangerous, but this is double the average of what's happening everywhere else. So obviously you can. I'm already sensing that there's some issues with safety and the way the corporations and the companies are protecting their workers.
Speaker 3:So I don't know about your research for the Kentucky mines that you know about, but at least for Colorado at that point in time they had company towns and I'll let you elaborate on that. And there was also 40% fewer fatalities in the union mines nationwide than in the non-union mines at the time.
Speaker 2:So yeah, the coal mining towns like you saw this a lot in Kentucky and other areas basically the coal companies would build these little towns near the mines and in those towns they would provide the housing. They had little stores that were ran by the company. So the house you rented was from the company, the stores you bought from were owned by the company, so all your rent was paid to the company. When you got paid, they would pay you partially in US currency, but then they would also pay you in something called script, which was only usable inside the company store. So there's an old and why I'm forgetting the name of the singer right now, but it's a song called 16 Tons where he talks about like I owe my soul to the company store Because so many times you went in debt to the company because everything was controlled by them prices and there was no competition of where to go shopping for it because they were so far out.
Speaker 2:So these went on for a long time. Script was used up into the 1940s. So yeah, there was a lot of problems and unionized was rare, like even in Kentucky, which we're going to talk about in other episodes, because that's something I really want to hit on, but even in the 1920s and 30s, there they weren't unionized, and that's what led to some of these wars was trying to unionize because the conditions were so bad.
Speaker 3:And that's basically what this is about some of those attempts to unionize and get better conditions. So our players in this? It started off with the United Mine Workers of America and they started the strike on behalf of the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company and Victor American Fuel Company workers Specifically. There's also another group that becomes key in this, which is the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company CFNI for short, and John Rockefeller Jr had controlling interest in that company. His father, john Rockefeller, had gotten the controlling interest and then passed it on to his son, rockefeller Jr, and they had about 72,000 acres and his father had had controlling interest of that company since 1902. And then Jr took it over nine years later. And if you don't know anything about the Rockefellers, they're East Coast people. They weren't really involved in the things that were happening in Colorado because they were in New York and removed physically from what was going on in Colorado. At some point the Colorado National Guard also gets involved, so we'll talk about that. But those are the major players coming into our description of events.
Speaker 3:So the whole thing started because workers had these horrible, unreasonable demands. They wanted their union to be recognized so that the union could bargain for the workers. They wanted a better compensation rate for their ton rate, and I'll explain what ton rate is here in a second. Eight hour work days, payment for dead work and I'll explain what that is in a moment. Also, a weight check person who would be brought from the working side of it, not the company side of it, because at the time the person who would check all the weights was a company man, so he would decide what the weight was and what he was going to pay out for that and there was no check or balance. There was nobody on the worker's side to say that's not the correct weight, you need to adjust that or fix that weight. They also wanted to have the right to use any store, any boarding house or any doctors, just as you were mentioning before, because they couldn't they only could buy things through the company after the company paid them. Couldn't, they only could buy things through the company after the company paid them.
Speaker 3:And they also wanted strict enforcement of Colorado's laws, which again, oh my gosh, how horrible. You actually want us to follow the law Completely unthinkable. And before that there was a US House Committee on Mines and Mining and they had found that the Colorado laws were really good when they examined them. But they said the fatality rates indicated that there was a problem. And nobody really like comes right out and says it. But as far as the government side, as far as the law enforcement side. But when you have a group that says the laws are really good but the result's bad, the problem to me seems obvious that there's either a lack of enforcement or some type of compliance issue along the way.
Speaker 2:Well, one thing I'm just seeing a lot of enforcement or some type of compliance issue along the way.
Speaker 2:Well, one thing I just see in a lot of different coal mining towns and cases because this is kind of an area that I've gotten a lot of interest in the last few years is the coal mines, the oil refinery, like all these different sources of basically stripping the land. It was very lucrative, so it was very easy to buy off sheriffs, to buy off politicians, to buy off inspectors. So, yeah, you could have the best laws in the world, you could have great supposed company support, but when you just paid somebody and sadly we saw that even up to today, I mean there are still mining accidents in the US that are killing individuals and a lot of it goes back to well, this company had 16 infractions just last year but we gave them time to fix it or they got to work around. So that's one of the I think the biggest problems is plagued mining from the beginning in the US is that it was just so easy to pay off people and it was never about the workers.
Speaker 2:And you see that, like in Harlan County again, like I want to talk about later, was the sheriff was directly in the pocket of and he was just basically a thug for the companies. He didn't care about the citizens. Because you're making a lot more money, especially in these rural areas, from these companies than you're going to make as your normal sheriff's paycheck.
Speaker 3:And yeah, I think even today we have problems where law enforcement in general are not compensated in a way that brings out the best in people and people who are not tempted by those other resources. It's really easy to say I'm not going to take that money and I'm going to do my job. When you have a well-paying job, it's a lot harder to resist those temptations when you feel like you can't send your kids to college or you can't get them the things that they need, or you feel like you know week to week can I make my mortgage payment and things of that nature. So I think that that ties into it too, that you need money from somewhere.
Speaker 2:I think there's that. And then also A small towns and everything. Many times people had family that were working for the companies and if you have the ability to have the money to get elected to a position like sheriff or city council, you probably also had the money to be related to somebody that had connections into the federal um, into these private companies, and it made it a lot easier. But also a lot of people think when corruption happens, it's oh, here's a hundred thousand dollar check. Well, this time it probably like here's a thousand dollars, turn a blind eye.
Speaker 2:But in a lot of these areas it started with just simple things like hey, you know what we'll pay for your house, since you're going to live in the county, in the corporation town, so well, now you don't have to pay rent. You know what? Hey, how about we give you a little extra? You know money for food this week? And it starts small and after time, once you've got them on the hook, it's like well, you've already accepted all this from us. What's another little bit to turn another blind eye to what's going on.
Speaker 3:And I'm sure, sometimes too, getting them the job in the first place.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:To have that connection.
Speaker 2:Rigging elections, paying for elections.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I never heard of that before, right? So one of the things that I mentioned was dead work, and you know that has a weird tone to it. But basically dead work is like dead time, things that you don't get paid for. So because you were paid the tonnage rate which I also mentioned. Tonnage rate meant that everything you brought out of the mine was weighed and then you would get paid by the ton that you were bringing out. So anything you did that didn't bring coal out of the mine for weighing you did not get paid for. So things like shoring up the sides of the shaft or trying to build the I guess it'd be horizontal supports to keep the roof or the top of the tunnel from collapsing, all of those types of things you're not going to get paid for. So then it becomes this balancing Like if I add an extra three supports that'll take me an hour, then that's an hour. I can't be bringing tonnage out, so I'm not going to get paid for that. So then you have workers who are trying to do the bare minimum of the dead work to get in and get what they need to get paid. But because they're doing the bare minimum, there's more accidents. So our union has made these horrible demands, like the fact that the mine should actually follow the law and actually pay them for the work that they're doing.
Speaker 3:And the response from Rockefeller's company CF&I came in 1913, and it was to evict all of the striking miners.
Speaker 3:So, just like you were talking about the company town where you had to live, there, they said all right, if you don't like these conditions, you don't like the terms of your employment, get out.
Speaker 3:So they immediately throw all these people out and now they're all homeless and, as you were mentioning, not a whole lot of area around to absorb that many people suddenly becoming homeless.
Speaker 3:So in advance of this strike, the union had secured some area, leased it because they were anticipating that this might be the response. And so one of the places that they leased ended up being referred to as the Ludlow Tent Colony and approximately 1,200 miners and their families went to this colony and basically it consisted of tents placed on wood platforms. So this land was leased by the unions and, as such, the unions strategically selected where they were going to lease that land at so that it would block traffic through the canyons to get to and from the mines. So it wasn't just about moving these people, but it was also about strategically making life difficult for the companies once they got rid of all of these workers. And Ludlow was one of these places that they went, and it's northwest of Trinidad, colorado, and it's a complete ghost town now, but if you ever drive through there you can see it. There's very little there at this point in time.
Speaker 2:So I think another thing that's important to remember as you're moving on this is that it wasn't until 1935 that the US passed the National Labor Relations Act that gave like protections for unionizing. So, yeah, at this point, like if you strike, you had no protections, there was no fair collective bargaining or anything like that. So, yeah, it was very easy to just toss you out and find the next person that was standing in line. And what year are we at? 1910?.
Speaker 3:Yeah, about 1910 to 1914 at this range.
Speaker 2:Luckily, it's prosperous enough that there's plenty of workers that are willing to soup in and take these jobs.
Speaker 3:And it's also you have the gold mining and silver mining too going on. So, depending on the price, you can also try to bring miners from other aspects of the industry in and pull them away from those places. So, again, like you were saying, labor wise, I don't think they had a shortage of laborers that they could bring in to replace anybody that they wanted to get rid of. And one of the other things the company would do you were talking about companies hiring people to be their muscle or enforcement things like that they hired a group called the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency and basically these guys were complete assholes. They were known to fire bullets into the tents, they would kill and maim people.
Speaker 3:They had an actual armored car that they had made that had a machine gun that they called the Death Special, that they had made, that had a machine gun that they called the Death Special and that was actually built by CF&I in Pueblo and then given to this detective agency to use, as they were trying to intimidate I mean, that's what it was it was intimidate and harass these workers until they would go away and leave them alone so that they could run their business how they wanted to, without having to acquiesce to any of these demands for basic what's, I think, what we would consider basic rights at this point in time. You know things like not being set up to die by your employer.
Speaker 2:You know minor details Well it seems like the history of these companies is the use of violence, intimidation, assault, murder, so historically that seems to have been a big way of trying to beat people into submission. Basically, and it's sad because it's not like this was a one time event. You look at the coal mines, mining fields, oil fields, railroad building. There's a lot of abuse of citizens, of immigrants, so it's just I don't know. I think it's a bigger aspect to talk about at another time in another environment, about just how these corporations really did take advantage of individuals and were protected by governments.
Speaker 3:And, like you said, it goes into several different industries and other areas, like the Triangle Shirt Factory fire. If you look at Sinclair's, the jungle with the meat packing facilities. It wasn't just mining, it was across the board. So in response to the sniper attacks that were coming into the tent cities, the miners dug pits under the tents so that they could try to hide when they didn't need to be out in the open, so that if somebody were to shoot through the tents they could at least have some place where they would be safe and not be hit by all of those bullets.
Speaker 3:Because of all of this conflict that's going on, the Colorado Governor Amons calls in the Colorado National Guard in October of 1913. And in the beginning it seems like things are better. The National Guard was there to try to stop both sides and de-escalate both sides of this conflict. But it didn't take very long until the Guard leaders aligned with the company and so again things start to go askew because the company is able to get these key players and people of importance under their thumb.
Speaker 3:And one of those people, general John Chase, had served during the Cripple Creek strike, which had been a couple of decades earlier, and in that era there was a replacement worker who had been killed and in retaliation An entire tent city, the Forbes tent colony, was destroyed while the residents were at a funeral for two infants, so that one at least the people who lived in the tents were gone someplace else when he came in and wiped out the entire colony. When he came in and wiped out the entire colony but there was again that history and this specific general chase already had animosity towards other miners, so it wasn't like he was coming in fresh and looking at the situation and of course all things seem to lead back to Cripple Creek somehow. So he was associated with that area and eventually the government runs short on funding. So the guard is recalled, but they leave back one little group and it's referred to as Troop A, consisting mostly of CFNI guards and Baldwin-Felts guards in Colorado National Guard uniforms.
Speaker 2:Baldwin felt guards in Colorado. National guard uniforms oh, this is recipe for disaster.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like the you know, we're protected by the fake badge that we just happened to buy from, like, the cookie jar cookie candy store a couple of days ago. And now I'm a. I'm a cop with this plastic badge that the kids like to play. Now you've got guys that already wanted to be cops and soldiers now being able to hide and mass themselves as soldiers. And the other thing is you've got people that are fighting for like just safety in the mind. It's like this mind could collapse.
Speaker 2:I'm not getting paid a lot, all right, I'm fired, and now I'm getting shot at like well, fuck, like you know, it doesn't matter if I'm damned. If I do, I damn if I don Die in a mine or get shot trying to go out and take a piss Like I don't know. This is just. You feel bad when we look back at the way we treat these individuals, but you can already see like you're pushing people to their limit. And you've got one side of bullies which you could talk about the Zimbardo experiment and the Stanford prison experiment and how people, when they get a little bit of power, suddenly explode with abuse of that power. But where this is at now, it sounds like it's just everything that boils right before shit hits the fan.
Speaker 3:And I think it's also important to think about their families, because this is an era where women can't just go out and work and make the same type of money men can. Nature where, if you went into that mine and didn't come out, it had a massive impact on your wife and children because they would no longer have a means to support themselves. So it wasn't just their own interests on the line, it was everything for their whole family. So all this tension is rising, the stakes are getting higher and higher and finally, on April 20th of 1914, all the shit hits the fan and there's still a dispute as to exactly what happened and what started it. Because, even though there's tons of accounts and witness statements and affidavits and you can go down an entire rabbit hole looking through all of the different evidence that there is, like every story, the people who were the miners have one set of facts and what they observed, and the people who were running the company security have their own set of facts and their view of what happened. So some people say that the guards were actually trying to execute an arrest warrant and were met with resistance. Some people say that they were going in to try to rescue a person who was being held against their will, and some other people say, basically, they just set up machine guns and killed everybody for no reason. So, depending on which version of events you look at or which witness statements you take into account, there's various different ways that this could have gone down.
Speaker 3:I have my own mindset as to how I think it went down, but in full disclosure. There's other people who say that things didn't happen the way I suspect that they happened. But there was a camp leader, louis Tykus, and he was called out to meet with Major Patrick J Hammond about a half mile away. Major Patrick J Hammond, about a half mile away, and the representation was that they were going to try to talk about finding a resolution, trying to deescalate the violence, trying to figure out how to move forward from where they were at, trying to get out of this very tense, dangerous situation.
Speaker 3:And while he's gone, the guards start setting up machine guns around the tent colony, which of course you know it's not going to be a good result. Like no matter why they're setting them up. Like you can see, there's already, they're already shooting at you in your tent city and now there's machine guns showing up. So luckily some people noticed and were able to leave and some of the survivor accounts and witness statements we get are from those people who saw those things happening. Some of the survivor accounts and witness statements we get are from those people who saw those things happening and made those observations and said, hey, we need to get out of here, especially women and children. A lot of the men would send their families away if they saw these things happening, but not everybody saw this because, again, you have 1,200 people-ish in this tent city, so as they're setting these things up.
Speaker 2:Not everybody's going to be aware of what's happening.
Speaker 3:So, danny, why?
Speaker 2:are those men putting machine guns up over there? I think they're just here to say hello, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 3:And so around 9 or 10 am there's these explosions that go off, and once the explosions go off, the machine guns around the tent city opened fire into the tent city. The guards claim that the men that were in the tent city started firing on them first, and then they responded and opened fire on them. And one of the guard statements said something along the lines of they saw women and children leaving and figured, since they were shooting at the guards, they must have gotten all of their family members out. So they felt free to just let loose with the machine guns at that point, because they just figured you know anybody who wanted to get out or should have gotten out were gone by that point. The evidence doesn't support that. The evidence supports that there were still plenty of women and children there and based on the numbers that are represented, I don't understand how you would think that they were all gone. So I find that representation of facts a little bit I don't know if suspicious is the right word self-serving I think self-serving is a little bit of a better term to come to mind.
Speaker 3:So, as all of this is going on, you have some people who are trying to flee, especially the women and children. The machine guns are just spraying bullets. There's accounts of as the women and children are trying to leave, that they're being shot down. There's some men who are grabbing rifles because they don't have very many but they do have some trying to come up and flank the people on the machine guns to try to eliminate the people who are using the machine guns on the tent city and things are just escalating and as things are escalating, more guards are coming in to support the effort to eliminate this tent city and the people who are in it. There's also a report at one point a freight train is moved in in front of the machine guns in an effort for the miners to be able to escape on foot and block that fire at least for a short time.
Speaker 3:And the conflict continues all day long and at the end of it the National Guard soaks the tents that are left in kerosene and sets it all on fire. And some of the reports from people who survived even said that the places where it didn't seem to be burning very well, from people who survived even said that the places where it didn't seem to be burning very well, they would come in and put more kerosene on and ignite the fire more to. So it wasn't just like a one-time thing. It wasn't just like this one person did this and the whole thing went up. According to many of the statements, it was a very deliberate team effort to get this done the.
Speaker 2:The biggest question is like what is the fucking end game? Because? Do you want these workers back? Or is it just to kill them off? Because you're not having to pay them anymore, so they're not really a burden on you? Besides, maybe, like just being out there, they're not taking your resources. This is really just like a dick measuring contest of like oh well, you went against us, you're speaking out against us, we'll just massacre entire family bloodlines. Oh well, you went against us, you're speaking out against us, we'll just massacre entire family bloodlines.
Speaker 2:And unfortunately, companies like seem to have no problem with this before. We saw this with the railroads like even within the last few years, they've been finding mass graves of irish and asian uh, individuals along railroads that were built because it was just cheaper to kill them off than to maybe have to compensate them. Or if they were to speak out in the atrocities that you were committing, either the ways that you were building the railroads, the way you were mining, if that got out, then it would bring attention. Well, it's almost. Somehow, sadly, it's easier to explain a massacre than it is to explain your violations in your mining companies, and it just makes no sense to me, and I think it's even more sickening to think that you're talking a little over 100 years ago.
Speaker 2:This is not ancient history. This is still recent in US history, and even being 1914. At this point. Right around this is April, only a few months from the start of world war one which would change things to a point. But historically it's just people killing americans, killing americans over money, and it's just a sad reality that will continue on even past today.
Speaker 2:So it's just yeah, this is unfortunately not a rare occurrence. I just think it was well hidden in history.
Speaker 3:And especially given how many resources are involved. As far as the lack of necessity for it, these companies were making tons of money. It wasn't like they couldn't afford to pay these workers. It wasn't like they were going to shut down because they didn't have enough. They had plenty. It was very lucrative. They were making tons of money.
Speaker 3:Rockefellers I think most people know the name Rockefeller even if they don't know the history there. But you had the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts at the time, Very, very well off families. They were the reason why things like income tax and estate tax were put into effect again around that 1913 timeframe. A lot of people don't realize that we didn't always have an income tax and it was supposed to be designed to break up these family legacy groups who had a lock on all of these companies, to try to make America an opportunistic place for everybody, where you weren't just born into wealth and then had this dynasty that you controlled huge portions of land and people and politicians indefinitely. So that was part of the reason why they put those taxes in place were to try to redistribute that wealth, to give more people a chance to rise up in companies and social standing and things of that nature.
Speaker 2:That has fucking worked outstandingly. I know, hasn't it. Right, I mean, I don't know about millionaires and billionaires running the government.
Speaker 3:No no.
Speaker 2:Seems outlandish in this day and age.
Speaker 3:Not at all. It's just an exchange of feudal systems. Right, we tried to get away from one feudal system and now we have the same system, just set up in a different way, where people are inheriting spots of importance instead of working for those spots, which was supposed to be the point of America that we and it made no sense because it's kind of unfortunately you see it, even today, like oh, all they had to do was say, yeah, we'll meet you at the time like $4 an hour or whatever they wanted, or $10 per ton, because the only place you have to spend your money is right in our towns.
Speaker 2:So all we have to do is raise the prices of rent a little bit, raise the prices in our stores a little bit. We're paying you more money, but we're just on the back end. The other companies that we own and stuff are going to get that money right back. So in the end, if these were smart businessmen, they could have just set it up to get their stuff back, but they were so arrogant they wouldn't even concede to this little bit of oh, we'll give you more money that we're just going to get right fucking back in our stores. Instead, let's slaughter innocent men, women and children, because in the end our bottom line will be better with the death of hundreds of people instead of a couple of dollars extra an hour.
Speaker 3:And I think a big part of this control too, because if you give them this thing, then what are they going to want next? And next they're going to want us to actually follow the law. Like how horrible would that be if, all of a sudden, we have to do what's legally required of us? Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:And I mean and they talked about this and other conflicts that I've seen related to labor across the U? S if you give in one place, then the next place thinks they can move up, and the next places they can move up and maybe they can unionize and get better stuff. So if you make an example out of this one area and this one group of people, then maybe you shut down the rebellions in other places.
Speaker 3:Which is exactly, I think, what they were thinking here, because there had been those other areas before that, those other conflicts before that leading up to this. So, again, I think this might've been that breaking point where both sides were like I'm done, I'm not messing with you anymore, this is what I want and I'm not willing to give any further on this. And I think that's part of what led up to this situation. And somehow, while all of this is going on, uh, who we talked about earlier, who is one of the leaders of the camp, comes into contact with the guard. Some people said he was approaching them to try to negotiate a ceasefire at that point, but he and two other members of the mining community are taken by the national guard and while two of the guards hold Takis, one of the other guard commanders, lieutenant Carl Linfelt, who had had conflicts with Takis in the months before leading up to this, breaks his rifle butt over his head and later the bodies of Takis and the other two miners are found and they're shot in the back. During the time that this happened, they said that those individuals were trying to flee from custody and so they were shot in the back as they were running away and the guards the officers in the guard would not allow those bodies to be removed for burial. So they sat on the side of the railroad for three days before, finally, the railroad union intervened and said you need to get these bodies off of our railroad and go bury them. So it wasn't even just that like it's bad enough. You've already destroyed everything we have. You've shot at us, you've burnt our tent city, now you've killed us, and now we can't even retrieve our dead to bury them. So it was a complete and total control, annihilation situation. And so at the end of this again, the counts are a little bit different. Some people had a count of 21. Some people said 25.
Speaker 3:People are dead from this specific incident, not the entire duration of this strike war, but just at Ludlow, just this one incident, and included in that are 11 children and two women who were found in one of those cellars. We talked about how, when they were shooting in the tents, they dug underneath the wooden platforms to have a cellar to hide in. During the attack, 11 children and two women went into one of those shelter areas and when they burnt the tent city down, they killed these people while they hid in this cellar. So it's like pretty horrific to think about that. They're in there and people are burning this down around them and nobody tried to help them get out. Nobody, you know, took a pause and said, okay, you can, you can escape, you can get out, and they were afraid enough that they stayed where they were at and and perished.
Speaker 3:So it's to me it's mind boggling. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around that situation. One of the magazines had reported that there were 55 women and children killed, but I haven't been able to find that supported in other accounts. So I don't think it was that many. But again, it depends on who you ask and how people were counted.
Speaker 2:And information back then. Again, like you said, it wasn't today, it was word of mouth, it was slow through telegram. Each side wanted to make their. We kind of see it in conflicts now in other countries where one side will say, oh, we only killed five of their people. And then the other side will be like, oh, they killed 500 of our people in war. And even though this is in the United States and it's a small skirmish in this town, it's still a war zone. I mean, you've got a lot of people shooting each other and each side wants to make the other look bad while making themselves not look good. The only thing that it doesn't bring solace to anybody, but it's kind of. The wish I have is that any of the soldiers or mercenaries are involved in this suffered a life of internal psychological fucking hell when they realized that they massacred innocent women and children for a small amount of money. Like I just hope somewhere in hell there's a place that they have to relive that every day.
Speaker 3:I would hope so too, although on some level I don't know that that is possible, because I think your conscience would get you sooner than that. I think that, as you were watching these things happen, if you had that level of awareness at some point, you would say, okay, this isn't okay. Even if you didn't feel like you could stand up to the other people, maybe you could try to save one of the kids Some three-year-old kid's wandering around. You'd think it'd be okay to just grab that kid and be like this one's coming with me or something.
Speaker 2:I don't know. There's also the concept that psychological um aspect. You have, like we see it and the way they used to do firing squads, where you had seven people but only six had live rounds. So you could always try to convince yourself you were the one that had the didn't have the live round, so you personally didn't cause a harm. Now, of course, whoever dumped gasoline on that specific spot will always know who they were.
Speaker 3:And I think too, just like you're saying, that level of separation where if you're shooting a machine gun or something that has long range, it's a lot less violent in that person's mind, I think, than if you're in close proximity where you're stabbing them or something of that nature, where you're seeing them face to face in close proximity.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like the conversation you have with, like, the difference between, like, a sniper and a serial killer, or when you're on a crime scene and you've obviously seen this before where it's very easy to tell if somebody's just shot once from a distance or close range. Most of the time that's indicative of it's, it's a robbery, it's an impersonal, but you see somebody stabbed up close five, six, ten times. It's personal, like there. There was some type of actual hatred there. So, yeah, I think it's easier to disassociate yourself from a distance than it is when you're up close. But even up there can be telltale signs, the difference between I took the time to burn this body and set it on fire. There's a personal hatred compared to a single shot and I left him to die.
Speaker 3:And that's also you know again the devastation there. They could have just as easily swept the town and arrested all the men. It's not like they were heavily armed, especially after the conflict lasted all day. They would have had no ammunition, they had few guns to begin with. There would have been very little risk at that point for them to sweep the town and eliminate. And they're tense. You don't have to set them on fire. You could just as easily knock them to the ground and haul the canvas away or whatever you want to do with it well, I mean, you can go back to like 1300 siege mentality.
Speaker 2:If you've got all these machine gun engagements set up, you just starve them out, you don't have to open fire. That is basically for lack of me not being sensitive at all to the plight of massacres, of people that commit massacres. But this is just like I want to show my big dick moment. So I'm going to shoot a ton of bullets. I'm going to tell my lackeys to shoot a ton of bullets Cause I want to show who's the bigger man by the bigger guns we have.
Speaker 2:Instead of, let's just take the time, maybe deny him food for a little while, not let them throw their sanitation out where they want to come to us and ask for help. No, let's just kill them, because that, for some reason, just makes me feel like more of a man or more of a. I have more power by doing this and this is something we see across. The companies do all this. They find it much easier. Instead of trying to wait things out, let's just kill, invade, take people out of their homes, you know, violate their every right possible under the constitution. Somehow in these mining towns those rights went out.
Speaker 3:The window, and I think part of the reason why they do that is the psychological intimidation for others and the people who are left, because if they circled around and said we're not going to give you any food or water until you give up, and then the men at one point were like, okay, my wife and kid, you know they, they, my wife and kids need to get out. This is not safe for them anymore. You guys go on. Even if at some point he dies, he'll die in the knowledge that his family hopefully, even though they won't have any income or any way to support themselves are safe someplace, that maybe their children will end up somehow taken care of someplace else, whereas if you are there in the moment and you see your whole family decimated and everything you own destroyed, and then those tales get out to other places, people who might maybe think about doing the same thing will decide you know what. That's too high of a price. I can't do that.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like the scene in I don't know five out of every three movies where the antihero goes in and kills all but one bad guy and grabs the bad guy and is like tell them what you saw here today and throws him out. That's kind of what it is here. Look at all these people we massacred. Now go tell other people like, throws them out, like that's kind of what it is here. Look at all these people we massacred. Now go tell other people when you go to try and find your next job or you get back in the mining system. Look you guys don't want to rebel. Because I was at these different camps, I was at love low when this massacre happened and I lost my own family or right, right, exactly like you don't.
Speaker 3:You don't want to go through what happened there. So, of of course I mentioned before, the National Guard's version was all the women and children were gone and the strikers were the ones who shot at them first and started the shooting. But again, there's so many women and children impacted there. That just doesn't make sense children impacted there.
Speaker 2:That that just doesn't make sense. Well, I'm again like. I'm a veteran. I'm I support the military a lot, but it's not like at this time in us history. The us military had a shining reputation of being upfront and honest. I mean from the you know native americans, even in this time period, I think, would say that the uS military was not exactly the most reliable source of their own behavior.
Speaker 3:And this is even just the Colorado National Guard, so it's even more localized. And at this point the actual guard other than Troop A, had been recalled. So the only people there at that point is this group of Troop A, so it's even more concentrated. It's not even just like you have a general army Like. These are specifically people who are interested in the outcome of this conflict at this point in time. It's not like a neutral law enforcement agency or some type of enforcement.
Speaker 3:Days of violence and it's known as the 10-Day War, where people who were sympathetic to the miners and the union attack all kinds of places that are anti-union and anti-union establishments, and the miners end up taking control of an area that's about 50 miles by 5 miles, which is pretty significant when you think about it. And of course, during this conflict you have more people who die. So finally the president sends in the federal troops to disarm both sides and the Colorado Coalfield War is basically declared over and it ends up with about 75 fatalities. Again, depending on where you look, some people the numbers are closer to 200, some closer to that 75 number, and eventually the union runs out of money at the end of the year. So, even though they declared it over, when the Army shows up at the end of the year, union's out of money, they're done. At the end of the day, the union was not recognized. The workers didn't get anything on their list. They didn't get their eight-hour day. They didn't get proper pay for their tonnage or proper weight controls for their tonnage or pay for their dead work time. Any of that. They didn't get any of it. No law enforcement of the laws that were in place. So when you look at it on the surface you'd say, oh, this was a colossal failure. You got nothing and so many people lost everything. But there's a lot more to it.
Speaker 3:The ripple effect that happened from that, even though the union ran out of money and they didn't get anything they wanted, it did end up in the trials of about 400 minors, 332 of them for murder, and these trials take place through 1920 and resulted in no convictions, except for John Larson, who was one of the strike leaders who was there, and he was convicted in 1950 to a life sentence for murder for one of the guards who were killed, the deputy sheriff, and with his 1915 life. It was a hard labor conviction but it ended up two years later going up to the Colorado Supreme Court and overturned. So he ended up not having a conviction after all, and he had also participated in those Cripple Creek strikes of 1903 and 1904. And in 1903, his house, along with several other of the strike organizers' homes, were dynamited and his daughter, fern, apparently, was thrown from her crib when this dynamite explosion happened and he had also at one point been shot with a shotgun. So there was a lot for him personally leading up to Ludlow, for him to be brought up on these murder charges of this deputy sheriff, when they've been doing all these things to him, his friends and his family like forever.
Speaker 3:Just it boggles my mind On the flip side of it, depending again on what numbers you look at some said 12, some said 22. National Guard members potentially 10 officers faced court martial but ultimately they're exonerated 10 officers faced court-martial but ultimately they're exonerated. And Lieutenant Carl Lindfeld he was the one who was responsible for the execution death of Tychus and the other two. He ends up being found responsible but acquitted, and I'm not exactly sure what that means as far as like cause. I don't know military law. I don't know how you can be found responsible but at the same time acquitted.
Speaker 2:Basically, it sounds like what they're saying is yeah, you did this, but it was justified in the conflict environment. The only weird things about this is and this is a conversation that even today is going to be had is you weren't really supposed to deploy US troops inside the US? I'm not sure exactly when that became like law, because even now, like it takes an act of Congress to be able to do something like that, but that's kind of what it sounds like, is that? But this was something that was seen and I mean there's so much because you said this is 1920, they're going to trial and stuff.
Speaker 2:There's so much that's happened in between this time period of between 1910, 1914, when you've got this battle happening in his mind. Then you're going into World War II. A lot of sentiments changed at that time and people were being tried by juries that looked like them. They weren't soldiers, they weren't rich people. Looked like them, they weren't soldiers, they weren't rich people. So I think this kind of builds into what we see in other episodes we've talked about in this time period where you start to see almost the anti-hero and the Wild West lower class. So it doesn't surprise me that you could have had 500 people tried and none of them would have been found guilty because they were seen as folk heroes at this point. And then the military. I mean, it's a court-martial. You're being tried by your own people. If they admit you did something wrong, then it becomes a bigger. The government did something wrong, so of course, no, we didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 3:Which this guy, I mean, he was a real piece of work. Linderfeld again. Funny enough, he started off as a mine guard in Cripple Creek in 1913 at the beginning of the strike. And then he goes from being a mine guard to being the deputy sheriff at Ludlow, to taking a military command, and then he claims martial law has been declared. There was no indication that it ever was. But he says that there is a martial law order declared and with that he starts running a portion of the Colorado National Guard in the area and that specific portion of the guard was not sent to the area that they were actually in, if that makes sense. So he says, oh, there's martial law. And then he runs off to this area that he's not actually been officially deployed to.
Speaker 2:My mommy sent me an order for martial law but it got lost in the mail. I'm sorry. That's just the dumbest thing ever. I'm waiting for my martial law order. It's supposed to be here any day through USPS. I'm waiting for my martial law order.
Speaker 3:It's supposed to be here any day through USPS. Well, and then on top of that, not only is he there saying there's martial law in an area that he's not been ordered to be at, he's then conducting illegal searches and seizures, and mostly what he's taking is ammunition. So again now he's making sure that he disarms his enemies and taking the ammunition, so it's not only disarming them but giving him additional resources to use against them. He seems to be the first one who morphs one of the Colorado Guard units from the Guard unit and the sheriffs into the Baldwin felts and one into one unit called Company B, and so it seems like he's the one who first spins it. Where he gets these people, who were probably people he already knew as a coal mine guard before all of this started into this National Guard group. So you know, I don't know that he was recruiting people he knew, but it would make sense, because how many guards ended up in this unit and how many of the people from Baldwin Phelps, the detective agency, end up coming in there?
Speaker 3:And he had a bad reputation before Ludlow. In fact, there was a law professor who tried to contact the governor to ask that he be suspended because he saw Linderfelt attacking and hitting a boy. He was beating a boy who was trying to take a train. So he saw that, contacted the governor and said hey, can you take this person off of his commission? It didn't happen. And then later Ludlow happened. And then this professor came forward and said I told you he was a bad dude. Nobody got him out and see what happened. And then even on their own side there was a captain who said that he deliberately kept Linfield's company stationed away from Ludlow because he had concerns that something might happen. And sure as shit he packed up his stuff, said I'm coming to this area, even though he wasn't ordered there, and declared martial law and took over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it sounds like this was a lot less of a national guard unit and more like a gang of outlaws, like this seems, which, again in this time period, like you're out of the west so you don't have those roving gangs like old outlaws, but this seems more like you're more starting to see organized crime and this guy was just very smart about bringing his friends in, arming them under the guise of here we are as military representatives and really it's about whoever's paying to keep him in whatever position he's meant to be in. If that's going to ludlow and massacring people, he's basically a gun for hire and it's just. You know, even in the 1910s and moving forward and going out west, it seems like there were a lot of issues with this.
Speaker 2:the farther you got away from civilization and when the owners of these companies aren't out there. They they're in New York and Washington and it's very easy to go tell politicians oh no, the reports you're getting back aren't correct. It's just so much easier to manipulate things from the source and still distance yourself to be able to say well, I didn't really know, these people were massacring people. Nobody ever told me that's not what the intelligence was being brought back to me from my company. Nobody ever told me that's not what the intelligence was being brought back to me from my company. And unlike now where you can go show me the email, back then it was just word of mouth and, of course, money talked.
Speaker 3:And even with the whole like word of mouth thing, linderfeld admits that he hit Takis and he admits in the court martial that he hit him with his Springfield rifle and they find him guilty of assault, but then they attach no criminality to that action, which again it just boggles my mind that he basically had two people hold this man while he beat him to death and nothing came of it. Like that just doesn't sit well with me at all and as somebody who was involved in law enforcement, that just like gets under my skin and makes me want to scream because how, how can that happen? How could he get away with that?
Speaker 2:Well, I think in God we could probably create a whole podcast just on how law enforcement developed. But back in that time it wasn't uncommon for law enforcement to use heavy handed tactics. Like when we look back at Wyatt Earp and you know the questionable reality of what really happened at the okay corral there's again there. There's conflicting reports of who shot first and what that was like, or even to Bat Masterson, who was known for waiting his gun so he could pistol whip people. This wasn't 1820s when Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp were around like. This is late 1800s, early 1900s and 1910s. So law enforcement back then it was a lot more punishment than it was that concept of keeping the peace, and the more almost violent you were, the more you got praised for keeping them criminals in line.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I suppose. And you also had the whole like needs-killing defense and things like that. Where you know, I guess you could try to convince somebody that Takis is the bad guy and needs to be gone. But at the same time it just still boggles my mind that you could have that many witnesses and he even gets on the stand himself and says, yep, I did it. And people are like all right, cool, cool, cool, you go on your merry way. But the silver lining in all of this if silver mining, silver, ha ha silver lining. Silver lining.
Speaker 2:Very well played.
Speaker 3:Thank you. There's a house committee on mines and mining investigation and they published a report in 1950. And that report gets the ball rolling to help support the child labor laws that come into effect and that helps get our eight-hour workday. So, even though the minors didn't get it from the strike because of this report and investigation, eventually we all get to have our eight-hour day because of their sacrifice. And what year was that? The report came out? In 1915. 1915.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:And then also in 1915, that's when John L Larson is convicted and sentenced to that life sentence. He also testified to the Commission on Industrial Relations, which again, I'm like geez, he's dealing with his own conviction and his own trial and at the same time he's off testifying on this other commission. So he challenged John D Rockefeller Jr regarding the conditions of the camps, including the validity of elections that they held there, where he said, the election judges counted votes from sheep and mules and even boxcars, and he testified about the houses as well, as when his house and the four other union organizers' homes were dynamited, and so he brought attention to that when he went and testified to this commission. Prior to all of this happening, Rockefeller had appeared before a US congressional hearing on strikes shortly before the massacre. Now that this has happened, there's this huge backlash on Rockefeller because he had put his name out there. That like this is the way things are going. And then Ludlow happens, and so, there again, word reaches the East Coast, Like you were talking about who's controlling the East Coast versus who's letting information come out of Colorado and there's this massive backlash. There's protesters, there's anarchists, they're following Rockefeller. Even at one point in time he leaves for his family estate that's 30 miles away, there's a failed bombing plot against him and then there's a dynamite explosion that ends up leading New York City Police Department to create the bomb squad. So there was a lot of fallout from this.
Speaker 3:Rockefeller, on the other hand, at some point sees the writing on the wall, maybe has that attack of conscience that you were talking about, that look in the mirror moment. But he decides that for whatever reason or motivation, whether it be altruistic or less than that, he needs to change things. And he hires a labor relations expert. He creates committees that work with worker representatives discussing working conditions, safety, health, recreation. He makes all kinds of improvements to their towns, such as roads and recreation facilities, and part of his solution is to start company-sponsored unions, which, of course, is less than ideal because now again the company is controlling the union. But at least it was something and at least it gave the workers on some level a forum to air their grievances and be heard. And he also hires a public relations expert, again trying to repair the damage that had been done to his reputation and to the company's reputation. And he goes to Colorado and he actually meets with the miners and their families and he actually checks on conditions there and talks to them and this was a very new idea for him to actually personally go and interact with these people and see what's going on firsthand instead of just relying on reports from the bottom up as to what's going on. So I think that really changed things too and brought a new accountability for people who were in charge and expectation for what they should be doing. So as we look now back as far as the reflected importance, there's been many people who have studied this and declared it a turning point for the labor law and labor relations. George McGovern did his doctoral dissertation in 1972, the same year he was running for president.
Speaker 3:On this specific incident. There's many books and songs. There is a verse novel, which is a type of poetry. There's an opera Upton Sinclair's King Cole is based on this event. So in hindsight it's huge.
Speaker 3:Because they were moved out so quickly, Archaeologists have been able to study it. It was the first type of area of this kind that was studied by archaeologists because it was preserved so well, because everybody was gone almost immediately. So it has a lot of significance now, looking back, which again I'm like how did I never hear about this? How did I you know in high school? Why did I not learn about this?
Speaker 3:But the site is now owned by the United Mine Workers of America. It was purchased by them in 1916. They placed a monument there to the lives that were lost in 1918. And then, in 2003, because people are so wonderful and altruistic, vandals came and cut the head off of the male figure and the arm off of the female figure of the monument that was there, Because you know, that's important Fucking savages. Exactly, Exactly, and they never figured out what happened or figured out who was accountable or found the missing parts. But it was repaired and it was unveiled in 2005. And then it was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2009. So that is the details of the Ludlow Massacre.
Speaker 2:I think there's so much to unpack with this and you can talk about kind of what happened before Ludlow and if we put us in the season that we're in, that's the ghost of Christmas past, okay, what's gonna happen? Then you get to the sludlow incense, like okay, here's the ghost of christmas present.
Speaker 2:And then we get to these changes that are happening in the 1920s like the ghost of christmas future and maybe scrooge has had his change of heart, which is rockefeller in this and the rich people are gonna see. Oh fuck, no, like these massacres and slaughters and the horrible things continue for like another 50 plus years, into even now. Now you're not seeing as much of the violence, but I mean even into the 60s and 70s and places like Harlan County, kentucky, bath, all these other areas. It's still a fight between unions which, for the most part, are just workers trying to have safer environments, especially mines. I mean, you're already dealing with these horribly dangerous environments Again, a lot of where I look at, and even silver mining has their own problems with lung diseases and things like that that you're already going to have a shortened life.
Speaker 2:But these things didn't change and even with the labor union laws that came into effect, people were still being pushed by sheriffs and their houses raided. So this is kind of what should be the start of a beautiful like let's change. But really it's just one of the first real document cases of something that would become a trend across the United States, of these big, well-funded companies massacring and slaughtering and what we see is this Scrooge didn't wake up on Christmas Day and see a beautiful world. He woke up on Christmas Day and saw more people who needed to crush him in his boot.
Speaker 3:Or at least for Rockefeller, the realization that if he kept having the appearance of doing that, that there were going to be consequences. That even if he didn't have consequences from the government, that there would be enough of these protesters and anarchists coming after him. That, you know, maybe at one point he wouldn't be lucky enough to get away from the bomb. Maybe at one point, instead of blowing themselves up, they might blow him up. So I think at least, if nothing else, there was the realization that he needed to at least make the appearance that he was listening. Now, whether anybody actually listened or not, like we can always hope that they did on some level, even if it was a self-serving reason to not look like the bad guy anymore.
Speaker 2:Well, and we saw this in bootlegging and we see this with drug trafficking today. And I'm not saying that mining and drug trafficking are the same, but in a way they kind of are, because you know one's legal, one's illegal, but both strip resources in a way to make money for one. And when one person goes straight and like you know what? I don't want to do this anymore. I want to be a productive member of society and I don't want to be hurting other people. Productive member of society and I don't want to be hurting other people. There's always somebody willing to step in and fill that void, to exploit and take care advantage of other people.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, that's just the cycle and you know it goes from mining to other resources and once that's done and it goes to, you could say, the restaurant industry, other stuff, where you're taking advantage of people looking for work, so the rich can get rich and the poor get poorer. And unfortunately, even to this day now, unions are losing their power. A lot of states are going to write to work. Unions don't have the same strength they had to bargain and protect people and it's a vicious cycle that people may not see as a criminal justice issue or true crime issue when you first hear like, oh, we're going to talk about this. This little massacre we're talking about is a much larger stain on the rape, assaults, murders, abuses that happened to families across this time period.
Speaker 3:I think I would totally agree with that. Hopefully someday we'll get better at figuring out how to work these things out, although probably not.
Speaker 2:We can always hope they did. It's been 115 years and it's still. We may call it different things, but it's unfortunately still the same today. And you know, even in the 80s, when Reagan talked about trickle down economics, like oh, if we tax people and we get these income taxes.
Speaker 2:It's going to help redistribute the wealth. Well, even today and it's not a political conversation, it's just flat out economics you still have a very small percentage of ultra rich when you have a majority of people that are lower and middle class. That obviously hasn't worked. So when we sit and we talk about what's the problem? The problem is workers have never been protected nearly as much as the people that control the corporations, that pay the government officials and that's my soap box for the week, so I'm just going to go ahead and get that one. But no, I definitely think there's a lot more episodes coming. You know me working and really having this new passion and love for the last three years of eastern Kentucky and going into Pennsylvania and stuff that. There's a lot of these historical things that we talked about and need to be brought up Because, again, as we say, a lot of our episodes and we'll always remind people this isn't really about true crime as a glorification of all criminals.
Speaker 2:That's the opposite of what we're trying to do. Really. What we're trying to do is a criminal justice broadcast that has the criminal elements but really shows what the victims in society has suffered because of the acts of others. So this is just another example of these are people that were just trying to work, support their families in hard times 10 years before the Great Depression hits, and they were victimized. They were taken horribly abused by a system that didn't see them well, and even in this one, law enforcement and government agencies were not the helping hand but the military wing of private corporations. So box number two I'll step off of, but I think this has been a great episode. I really liked this case. I really like when we do these ones where you just bring me something and you're like I'm going to tell you all these facts and I can just sit here and go oh shit, this is not going to go well, because they never do. We wouldn't be talking about them. If it was Happy Rainbows, this would be the Happy Rainbow podcast.
Speaker 3:So I'll have to do the next one where you get to do the Kentucky coal mines and yes, I have to put that together.
Speaker 2:And the other thing I think is kind of sad Now bring this up, because you talked about that memorial which is kind of out in the middle of nowhere, harlan Kentucky has. Kentucky has this beautiful coal mining museum and I'll probably bring this up like a hundred times because it's an amazing facility but it's like three hours from anything you really have to be like. You know, I'm going to take a whole day of my life to go to these museums and I think that's one thing. How, in a way, these historical events get lost, especially when you talk about, like the coal mining wars or you talk about the Ludlow, is because they happen in these remote areas that people aren't in anymore. So it just kind of becomes this ghost and this shell that nobody ever really talks about and it's good that we're bringing light back to those.
Speaker 3:I mean, just as your point goes, I never heard about this and it was only because I drove past that sign I don't even know how many times, as I was frequently traveling between Colorado and Albuquerque that after you see the sign so many times, you say what the heck is that and you look it up. But had I not been driving that road constantly, I would have never thought to look it up and I still wouldn't know about it today.
Speaker 2:If it wasn't for Timothy Olfaint and Walter Goggins I wouldn't give a rat's ass normally about and I don't mean this to be mean, but like nowhere Kentucky.
Speaker 2:Like I was a city kid from Indianapolis but the more I went up in academia and then watching Justified and seeing the way the Harlan County in Eastern Kentucky was presented and then I was given the opportunity to go work at a university there and I fell in love with it like amazing people, a rich history and then really seeing the impacts from a social work side and a criminal justice side of what coal mining and those coal towns, everything have done to an entire state and and those coal towns and everything have done to an entire state and how much they still take themselves back to that because it's not as far removed.
Speaker 2:Like I did a class on the coal mining wars in Harlan with some of my students at the university I worked at. Most of them this is a couple of years ago, hadn't even heard of these things, but they were from that county or surrounding counties and went home and talked to their parents and grandparents and some of their parents grandparents were in these strikes and were part of this and they were like we've never even heard of this back a little bit of history about their own grandparents and to remind America of the struggles that have led us where we're at today, and to inform criminal justice and police officers and lawyers and stuff that you have an ethical duty to protect the citizens, not to be corrupt.
Speaker 2:To me, it's a win-win for us and we get to continue to talk about things we love to talk about.
Speaker 3:Absolutely so until next time.
Speaker 2:I want to thank you all so much for listening to our little podcast. This is created with love and passion for criminal justice and true crime. So if you're enjoying the podcast, please follow us, like or rate us on whatever system you're listening to us on, subscribe to our podcast and download episodes. Downloads are important for our growth, as is growing our listeners. So if you wouldn't mind, take the time to ask your friends, family, co-workers, tell them about us through word of mouth, social media I don't care if you even scream at strangers on the streets to help us kind of get out there who we are.
Speaker 2:If you're interested in learning more, you could visit our website at wwwdeviantcriminologycom. There you'll find some stuff about our backgrounds, references, show notes for each episode. You can also follow us on our Facebook page at Deviant Criminology Facebook page. At Deviant Criminology. We also have an Instagram page, which is Deviant underscore Criminology. Or find me at Dr Richard Weaver on Instagram, and as we grow, we hope to develop a community that will grow with us. So again, thank you for taking the time to listen and have a good week.
