Wednesday, October 12, 2022
This date used to be Coal Miner’s Day and marks the day a small band of striking coal miners in southern Illinois called out Chicago coal barons and stood their ground at Virden in 1898. By the end of the day, seven miners lay dead, but the strike-breaking barons had been stopped. For most historians, the defiance of union coal miners at the Virden Massacre marked the turning point in the labor movement, impacting the lives of untold thousands of laborers over the next century.
- Zinn Education Project’s article Oct. 12, 1898: Battle of Virden