Much of the class struggle engaged in by workers and much of the deadly injustices U.S. bosses inflict on them is missing from high school and college textbooks. In a communist society, all workers would be taught the real history of this capitalist system.
Recently I was walking through the St. Bridget Cemetery in Lilly, Pa, located in the heart of Western Pennsylvania’s coalfields when I stumbled upon a large monument marking the burial site of 35 immigrant railroad workers from Italy and countless others whose names, according to the stone, “are known only by god.” These workers died in a massacre in 1903.
I researched it and found that the railroad bosses had constructed wooden buildings for the workers to sleep in. In some cases, nearly 150 workers were jammed into buildings containing only one door and a few small windows. Needless to say, they were fire traps.
One night a building burst into flames. The workers struggled desperately to escape, but many became entangled at the solitary exit and died. Their remains were placed in 12 coffins and buried in one large grave. This is just one example in U.S. history of bosses’ crimes committed against workers.
The Lilly miners have a militant and anti-racist history. In the early 1920s, the Klan rode into Lilly and marched to a nearby hillside where they burned a KKK cross to protest the exclusion of Klansmen from the miners’ union. On their return to the railway station, local workers sprayed them with water hoses. Shots rang out and two people lay dead.
In 1970, union miners burned a coal tipple (vehicle) to the ground at a non-union mine near Lilly. The union was later fined, but this did not dampen their militancy.
These are examples of the sort of injustices suffered by workers here and their fightback against them over the years. It’s important for workers to learn all this as we continue to struggle against this decadent death-dealing capitalist system. I look forward to the day when all of this is included in history books.