“Joins the Ranks of Great Progressive Movies”

Bill Meyer sums up his review of 1913 Massacre: Seamless editing, engrossing interviews and a stirring well-integrated music soundtrack make the film flow like long lost friends catching up on history. Arlo makes the point early on that it was folk songs where people learned about working class history, such…

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Newtown, Calumet and Dark Anniversaries

Sometimes during the Question & Answer periods after screenings of 1913 Massacre, people ask why the tragedy held the town of Calumet in its grip for so long. Why did the memory of the Italian Hall disaster last? Why did it take so long for the town to come to…

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Foreign Agitators!

A hundred years ago yesterday, on December 10th, 1913, the operators of the Calumet and Hecla Mine and members of the Citizens Alliance announced that all representatives of organized labor from outside the state had just “twenty four hours to leave. If they fail to do so they will be…

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Moses Called The First Strike

People from all parts of Europe made their way to Calumet at the end of the nineteenth and the start of the twentieth centuries. The copper-mining town attracted so many immigrants — Germans, Italians, Croatians, Slovenians, Cornish, Irish, Swedes, Norwegians — that it’s sometimes jokingly referred to as “the smelting…

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