By Dick Meister
(Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based journalist, has covered labor and political issues for more than a half-century)
It began at 10 o¹clock on a cold morning 95 years ago this month, on April 20, 1914 in the southern Colorado town of Ludlow. National guardsmen, professional gunmen and others high on a hillside unleashed a deadly stream of machine-gun and rifle fire into a tent colony below that housed some 1000 striking coal miners and their families.
Strikers grabbed their hunting rifles and fired back. Two men and a boy on their side were killed. One Guardsman died.
The battle raged throughout the day. Finally, as night fell, Guardsmen wielding torches dashed down the hill, doused the tents with coal oil and set them aflame. They shot to death 10 of those who fled — men, women and children alike as well as three strike leaders they had captured. Thirteen others, two women and 11 infants and children, were burned alive or suffocated as they huddled in a pit under a tent where they had sought refuge.