A statue of heroic Greek mine worker Louis Tikas who was murdered by the National Guard in the Ludlow Massacre is raised in Trinidad, Colorado to be officially unveiled on June 23.
Louis Tikas has become a symbol of the struggle for labor rights in the United States after his killing by the Colorado National Guard on April 20, 1914 as the leader of the Ludlow miners who went on strike for inhuman working conditions in the Rockefeller mines.
According to Kalami.us, the ceremonious unveiling will be accompanied with declarations by Colorado State and Denver City officials.
The statue is built on the intiative of the Foundation of Hellenism of America, with the financial support of Greek Americans. The statue of Louis Tikas will be placed next to the Southern Colorado Coal Miners Memorial.
“The Greek immigrant Louis Tikas changed the course of American history and labor laws,” says the official Foundation of Hellenism of America website.
The Greek workers’ hero
Ilias Athanasios Spantidakis was born in Loutra of Rethymno, Crete in 1886. At the age of 20 he immigrated the U.S. never to return to Greece. He lived in Denver where he worked in the steel mills. He became an American citizen in 1910 and opened a cafe on Market Street in Denver, a “Greek town” with 240 Greek residents. Next to his cafe, was the head office of the local organization of the “Industrial Workers of the World”, the “Wobblies” and he became fascinated by their cause.
By the end of 1912 he was an organizer for the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), in between he worked as a miner-strikebreaker in Colorado’s Northern Field but ended up leading a walkout by 63 fellow Greeks at the Frederick, Colorado mine. Tikas was chased from the field, shot and wounded by Baldwin-Felts detectives as he escaped through the back door of a boarding house in Lafayette.
On September 23, 1913, the great strike in Ludlow began, with the participation of 13,000 miners. The strikers demanded the following: to shop from any store of their preference; go to any doctor they wish and not exclusively to the doctors of the company; recognition of their union; establishment of an eight-hour work day; law enforcement of the State of Colorado regarding mining safety; to abolish the script and the system of guards of the company that made the workers’ camps like concentration camps. Head of the strike were John Lawson and Louis Tikas, supported by Cretans who worked at the mine.
The strikers set tents in the area at a strategic point in order to prevent the strike-breakers from entering the mines. In October, the strike camp functioned as a city: five hundred men, three hundred and fifty women, four hundred and fifty children, a Greek bakery, a Greek coffee shop.
The company had requested the intervention of the National Guard and the Governor of Colorado had agreed. The conflicts were violent. The Rockefeller family that owned the mines demanded for people of their own to go there in National Guard uniforms and break the strike along with the National Guard. The governor agreed to that too. But the strikers did not back down.
By April 1914 the cost of maintaining the troops led to a reduction in the National Guard presence, resulting in increased violence. On Sunday, April 19, 1914, the National Guard encircled the Ludlow camp and deployed a machine gun on a bluff overlooking the strikers. Although no one knows exactly what instigated the violence, some accounts suggest that officers of the National Guard demanded that the miners turn over at least one individual, possibly a striker or even a hostage that they were holding, but the miners refused. The National Guard then opened fire on the camp, initiating a pitched battle that lasted throughout the day.
According to accounts, Tikas had been lured out to discuss a truce. He went to meet the head of the National Guard, Captain Karl Linderfeld, holding a white flag. The two met on the hill and talked for a while. Then eyewitnesses said that the officer hit Tikas in the head with the butt of his rifle. The rifle broke in two smashing Tikas’ skull. Men of the National Guard then shot Tikas’ lifeless body.
The troops opened fire at the camp and a real battle ensued. As the strikers ran out of ammunition, they retreated from the camp into the surrounding countryside. Women and children, hiding from the bullets that strafed the camp, huddled in cellars that had been dug underneath their tents. In the evening the National Guard men soaked the tents in kerosene and set them on fire. In one cellar 11 children and 2 women were found burned and suffocated. In all, 25 people were killed during the Ludlow Massacre, 3 of whom were National Guard troops.
When the miners returned to their burned camp a few days later, they found Louis Tikas’ body. His funeral took place on April 27, with thousands of workers following the procession.
In retaliation for the massacre, miners attacked anti-union town officials, strikebreakers, and the mines, taking control of an area about 50 miles long and 5 miles wide. As many as 50 people died during the reaction to the Ludlow Massacre. To avoid further escalation of violence, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sent in federal troops to restore order. Unlike the National Guard, the federal troops were impartial and kept strikebreakers out of the coal mines. The strike ended on December 10, 1914. The heroic struggle of Ludlow miners won the UMWA 4,000 new members.
Today in Ludlow town, there is a monument dedicated to the memory of victims and of the brave Louis Tikas. In his hometown of Rethymno, there is a street named Ilias Spantidakis.
The documentary “Palikari: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre” by director Nikos Ventouras and scriptwriter Lambrini Thoma released in 2014, tells the story of the brave Greek American who put a founding stone for better labor laws in the United States.
Source: usa.greekreporter.com