A Trainload of Black Miners Arrives in Roslyn — to Find the Strike Already Broken
Two hundred seventy Black miners and their families came from the Midwest to replace striking Northern Pacific coal miners. By the time they arrived, the white miners had returned to work.
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.
TACOMA, Aug. 17.—[Special.]—Two hundred and seventy Black miners and their families arrived at Roslyn by special train from St. Paul this afternoon. They had been imported from Danville and Toluca, Illinois, and Rendville, Ohio, to take the places of striking miners at the Northern Pacific coal mines. The white strikers had resumed work while the Black miners were coming, so the newcomers will now be employed in another mine. Seventy of the arrivals are the wives and children of the miners. The train left St. Paul last Monday, but long stops for meals delayed it until today. No friction is expected between the white miners and the Black miners, as the former tacitly agreed not to interfere with them when they went to work.
“No friction is expected between the white miners and the negroes, as the former tacitly agreed that they would not interfere with the negroes when they went to work.”
Roslyn’s Black mining community became a lasting part of the town, but its origins were inseparable from strikebreaking and the racial hierarchy of labor. The episode rhymes with today’s fights over migrant labor, union busting, and who gets blamed for taking jobs.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.