Ludlow Massacre: The Death Special, a Burned Tent Colony and Ivy Lee's PR

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In Colorado's coal fields, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, managed by John D. Rockefeller Jr., ran company towns where miners were paid by the ton, often a 2,200-pound long ton, earned nothing for "dead work" such as timbering, and were paid in scrip. The 1912 fatality rate of 7.06 per 1,000 workers was more than double the national average. In September 1913 the United Mine Workers of America called a strike over seven demands, including union recognition and an eight-hour day, and more than 10,000 evicted people moved into tent colonies at the canyon mouths. The Baldwin-Felts agency swept the camps with searchlights and an armored car with a machine gun, nicknamed the Death Special.

When Colorado ran out of money for the National Guard, Governor Elias Ammons left behind Troop A, largely made up of mine guards. On April 20, 1914, the day after the Ludlow colony celebrated Orthodox Easter, a daylong firefight ended with militiamen burning the tents. Camp leader Louis Tikas was struck with a rifle butt by Lieutenant Karl Linderfelt and later found shot in the back, and two women and 11 children died in a cellar beneath a burning tent. Armed miners waged a Ten Day War until President Woodrow Wilson sent federal troops, and Rockefeller hired Ivy Lee, a pioneer of modern public relations.

• Families dug cellars under their tents to escape gunfire, the same pits where the women and children were trapped.
• The bodies of Tikas and two other captives lay by the railroad tracks for three days.
• More than 400 strikers were arrested and union leader John R. Lawson was convicted of murder, later overturned, while all 22 court-martialed guardsmen were acquitted.
• A 1996 dig by the Ludlow Collective found burn patterns and bullet trajectories that corroborated the miners' accounts.
• On Lee's advice, Rockefeller toured the camps, attended social events and set up a company union.