The Mine Strike That Ended in a Shooting — and a Nonsuit
Washington’s Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of the Thornburn family’s damages suit after violence between striking miners and Black strikebreakers at the Franklin and Newcastle coal mines.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Olympia, Jan. 4.—The supreme court has handed down decisions in the following cases: Robert Thornburn and Ellen Thornburn, appellants, vs. C. J. Smith, T. B. Corey, M. C. Sullivan and the Oregon Improvement Company, respondents. The Oregon Improvement Company, operating coal mines in King County, had trouble with its employees. It discharged them and, against their protests and threats, imported a supply of Black workmen. Guns and ammunition were deposited in the company’s storehouse for the use of the Black miners, as it was evident from the attitude of the former employees that resistance would be made to replacing the men. About 1 o’clock on the morning of June 6, the respondents took a trainload of Black miners from Franklin to Newcastle, where a strike was in progress, and upon their return to Franklin a number of shots were exchanged between former employees and the Black miners. During the firing, Mrs. Thornburn was shot while in her own residence. Hence the suit against the company and Smith, Corey and Sullivan for damages. But it was proven that at the time of the fracas the Black miners were not engaged in their duties as employees of the company; that they had forcibly taken arms from the company without permission, and had been warned to act only in self-defense. It appears that the officers of the company did all in their power to prevent an outbreak, short of ceasing to operate the mines. Thus this court holds the motion for nonsuit to be rightly taken.
“The officers of the company did all in their power to prevent an outbreak, short of ceasing to operate the mines.”
The Franklin–Newcastle coal strikes are a reminder that Washington’s labor history was also a racial history: companies used Black miners as strikebreakers, then courts sorted out the violence after the fact. The same questions—who gets to work, who bears the risk, and who is protected by law—still shape fights over jobs and immigration today.
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