Randall McGuire

R. H. McGuire & Dean Saitta: The Colorado Coal Field Strike & War of 1913-1914 was a watershed episode in US labor history. It resulted in the Ludlow Massacre where 25 people including 2 women&11 children died & in 10 days of class war in Colorado. It lead to some “progressive” reforms in labor relations that turned corporate management policies away from direct confrontation with strikers to negotiated settlements. Today the United Mine Workers of America maintain Ludlow as a monument to the struggle of organized labor in America. Binghamton University & the University of Denver sponsor the Archaeology of the Colorado Coal Field War project. We are recovering the memory of Ludlow & exhuming the class struggle in the coalfields of Colorado. To do this we built a radical praxis of archaeology that confronts inequality & exploitation in the world. Key to this effort is an archaeology of the US working class that speaks beyond the traditional Middle Class audience of archaeology to working families about working class history. This project is a form of direct political action -- bringing events of 1913-14 into contemporary dialogues on class struggle & unionism in the U.S.

 

 

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