What we aren’t taught in schools is that the U.S. police had a reputation of shooting and murdering strikers back in the early 1900s. There are hundreds of accounts in the old newspapers of militiaman and policemen gunning down strikers and anyone who they might suspect of being a striker. It was their method of bringing law and order around for big businesses and early American corporations. Men, women, and children gave up their lives so that future generations might have better pay and safer working conditions.
This incident happened in the summer of 1912.
Four Women and Three Men Shot Down in Church Yard By Police
Striking Massachusetts Mill Workers Seek Sanctuary in Shadow of Church, But Police Use Guns
Clinton, Mass., June 3. — Two women are dying of bullet wounds here today; two other women and three men are seriously wounded.
The shooting was done by the police, the “guardians of law and order.”
The dying and the wounded are striking textile mill workers. They were shot down by the police in the yard of the church of Our Lady of the Rosary.
No one here seems to know just exactly how the trouble started.
The police say that strike pickets forcibly tried to prevent a woman going to work in the mills.
In any case, there was a clash between the police and the workers, most of whom were women.
When the police drew their clubs the strikers ran into the church yard. There they thought they were safe in sanctuary.
But the police charged. The strikers threw stones at them. There were about 300 of them in the church yard by this time. There were 40 police.
The police were driven back by the stones. They drew their revolvers and charged again, firing into the air.
They were driven back again, and this time, when they charged, they did not fire in the air. They fired directly into the massed crowd of men and women in the church yard. The four women and the three men strikers fell bleeding to the ground.
Major Dwinnell, sheriff of the county, now is in charge of the situation.
Dwinnell has sent to Worcester and Fitchburg for more police. He also is holding Company K of the state militia under arms, ready for use against the strikers.
Two of the men strikers shot are in the county hospital. One is shot through both cheeks.
Policeman Wallis and Fitzgerald are in the hospital for treatment for bruises caused by stones.
Source: The Day Book (Chicago, Illinois newspaper). June 03, 1912
