Illinois coal wars

Illinois Coal Wars

Miners gathering at the railroad tracks in Virden on October 12, 1898.
Date	1898–1900
Location	Illinois, United States
Deaths	approximately 24

The Illinois coal wars, also known as the Illinois mine wars and several other names, were a series of labor disputes between 1898 and 1900 in central and southern Illinois.

The disputes were marked by the Chicago–Virden Coal Company bringing in strikebreakers by train to bypass local coal miners, racial violence between black and white coal miners, most notably during the Battle of Virden on October 12, 1898, and the Pana massacre on April 10, 1899.^[1][2][3][4]

In 1898, a coal miners' strike began in Virden after the Chicago-Virden Coal Company refused to pay their miners union-scale wages. The strike ended with six security guards and seven miners killed, and over 30 others were injured. The company finally granted the wage increase a month after the strike. The strike in Virden is also credited with the winning of the 8-hour work day for hourly mine workers, and a memorial in the town square commemorates the battle.^[5]

The same conditions and organizations were also involved in similar conflicts in two southern Illinois towns: in Lauder (now Cambria, Illinois) on June 30, 1899, and in Carterville, Illinois on September 17. At Lauder a group of African-American miners traveling by train from Pana were attacked. One woman, Anna Karr, was killed and about twenty others wounded. At Carterville, five more non-union African-American miners were killed in rioting.^[6] Local juries acquitted all defendants accused in those attacks.^[7]

After the massacre, the mine operators temporarily shut down all of Pana's mines in late June to demonstrate good faith in arbitration, and also because of their fear of violence. Because of the low wages paid by the operators, the black community was left impoverished. Many of them spent their money to get to Weir, Kansas, where many of them were recruited to break up another mining strike.