Massacre of the Miners (Horrors of History Series)

by T. Neill Anderson

Overview

The fourth book in the Horrors of History historical fiction series recounts the untold story of the Ludlow Massacre. 

Colorado, 1914. A tent colony of coal miners has been on strike for seven months, bargaining for fair wages and safer working conditions. The Snyder family—Eleven-year-old Frank, his parents, and his four siblings—are doing their best to hold firm with their fellow strikers in the face of threats from the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company. But the simmering threat of violence from the Colorado National Guard and the company strike-breakers grows ever more oppressive. Something terrible is coming soon.

On April 20, 1914, gunfire breaks out in a Colorado tent colony of coal miners on strike. Men, women, and children run for their lives or cower in crude dirt cellars under their tents. In a single day of chaos, six strikers, two women, ten children, and two babies die. These are the facts. But why did it happen? What was it like to be there?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580895200
Publisher:	Charlesbridge
Publication date:	05/12/2015
Series:	Horrors of History Series
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)
Lexile:	810L (what's this?)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

T. Neill Anderson is fascinated—and often horrified—by the countless true tales of America’s past stories. The Horrors of History series are his first books for young readers. He lives and writes in Brooklyn, New York.

Read an Excerpt

Tuesday, April 21, 1914
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Horrors of History: Massacre of the Miners"
by .
Copyright © 2015 T. Neill Anderson.
Excerpted by permission of Charlesbridge.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Prologue ix

Chapter 1 Rifles 1

Chapter 2 Hide-and-Seek 17

Chapter 3 "Put the Baby in the Buggy" 30

Chapter 4 Like Hailstones Upon Houses 44

Chapter 5 Into the Foxhole 58

Chapter 6 The Mirror Cracks 71

Chapter 7 Spatters of Blood 82

Chapter 8 Louis the Greek 95

Chapter 9 Harvest of Death 106

Epilogue 121

Authors Note 126

Photo Credits 130

Editorial Reviews

More than one hundred years ago, on April 20, 1914, a violent labor struggle erupted at the Ludlow, Colorado, coal mine. Earlier, after Greek immigrant miners struck Colorado Fuel & Iron Company for better working conditions and higher wages, they and their families were evicted from company housing. Now, on Easter Sunday, the Colorado National Guard militia is "itching for a fight," as are some of the miners. It's almost dark when shots ring out over the tent city. With panic running rampant and children screaming everywhere, chaos reigns. Some wives and children head to perceived safety, while others hunker down in dirt cellars. Events of the day move along in fairly short snippets, following particular individuals or families. It's almost as if readers are watching movie shorts yet are conscious of all the action. This fictional account of an actual event is written in a gripping narrative style and accompanied by archival black-and-white photographs. The epilogue and author's note give facts, figures, and sources for this intriguing title in the Horrors of History series.
-Booklist


Anderson, author of several titles in the "Horrors of History" series, brings another tragedy to light. The author novelizes the true massacre at Ludlow, a camp of striking coal miners in Colorado. It is Easter season, 1914, and the miners, the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, and the Colorado National Guard, are at a standstill. The strikers find they prefer their tent life to the difficulties of living in the company town, and the company and the National Guard have grown weary of the confrontation. A company wife sends a letter to the Guard, suggesting that the miners have kidnapped her husband because he refused to strike with them. The Guard takes this as an excuse to raid the camp, and after days of fruitless conversation, gunfire rains down. Families flee and hide. Men try to stand and fight. Lives are lost, and justice seems far away. The massacre is a true tragedy that may interest those who read historical fiction, but middle school students will need more context about what it meant to be a "company man" and a miner in order to understand the strike and to even begin to comprehend the shoot-out. VERDICT The plethora of back matter and other nonfiction elements make the novel a good fit for classroom literature circles or as part of a library booklist or display about mining life.
-School Library Journal 


In this latest novel in his Horrors of History series, Anderson writes about a little-known incident from U.S. labor history, the Ludlow Massacre that took place in southern Colorado in April, 1914. It was the culmination of a strike that forced miners and their families to spend months living in a cluster of tents, sometimes in cellars dug to shelter mothers and children from gunfire. The final clash between coal miners and Colorado national guardsmen claimed nineteen lives, including strike leader Louis Tikas, militiaman Pvt. Alfred Martin, twelve-year-old Frank Snyder who was shot in the back of the head, and two women and eleven of their children who suffocated in the cellar beneath a burned-out tent. All are characters included in the novel.

Anderson switches between the strikers’ and guardsmen’s points of view, building suspense and elucidating some of the causes behind this gruesome event, though his decision to leave the story in Ludlow limits readers’ understanding of more complex political and economic forces. Anderson draws characters quickly, and while it may be a little too easy to cheer for the strikers and hiss at the guardsmen, readers will respond to them. As an added bonus, Anderson includes twenty-one historical photographs, including the haunting cover photo of a boy the right age to be Frank Snyder. An author’s note explains Anderson’s research and the challenges he faced in balancing fact and fiction. The book is a worthy complement to the many books about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, especially for male readers.
-VOYA Magazine

From the Publisher

2015-02-16
A fictional account of a real, deadly day. In 1914, when coal miners in several Colorado communities went on strike for more pay and better working conditions, they and their families were forced out of company-owned housing. They set up tent camps and continued to strike. Tempers flared among the miners, scab workers, and coal company officials; eventually, the National Guard set up militia nearby. On April 21, miners and militia fought a deadly battle whose origin is unclear; by the end of the day, 20 people had been killed, including two women and 11 children who suffocated in the cellar where they sought refuge. Anderson's latest in his Horrors of History series begins with this grisly sight and then flashes back two days with his imagined story of how it came to be. The narrative comes at readers from all angles, with no clear main character or point of view but with far too many characters for easy comprehension. The background of the strike is hard to understand, the topography of the attack murky, and the violence inexplicable. Anderson seems to revel in gory details, as when a 10-year-old boy is shot: "A bullet had torn off a large chunk of Frank's skull and brain."This novel neither elucidates nor entertains; it's hard to see a reason for it. (Historical fiction. 12-16)

Kirkus Reviews