A summer of violence and mayhem
It was the bloodiest day in the history of Fayette County, and I wish I had been there to take it all in. I’ve read about it, I’ve pondered its meaning; to have seen it unfold would have been special, though frightening and scary, too.
The county was the focal point of a regionwide bituminous coal strike; the strike, which took place during maybe the worst year of the Great Depression, ultimately drew the attention of President Franklin Roosevelt.
The fateful day began close to four o’clock on a hot, sultry morning in August 1933, as a car approached union pickets near Rowes Run.
A handful of witnesses later told police the gunman inside the car fired without cause, striking Louis Podraskey, a 38-year-old naturalized citizen, who cried out after he was hit, “They got me, boys.”
Groaning in pain, Podraskey was taken to Brownsville Hospital, where he died that afternoon.
Seriously wounded was Ben Brown. A .38-caliber bullet smashed into Brown’s spine, paralyzing the 45-year old from the waist down.
“I saw the flash of a gun. He shot several times,” said picket James Dillinger. “He pulled past the church. He started firing again.”
Raymond Hightower told authorities he saw a “streak of fire coming down from his gun. It looked like a machine gun coming.”
George Rigger of Waltersburg had a more detailed description. “A large Negro man with an American flag” stood off to his left, he said, when an automobile “swung around a curve in the highway past the Rowes Run church…. I think [the car] was a Ford roadster, and it only had one headlight and no tail light.”
Harrison Mickey was standing next to Podraskey when he saw the one-headlight car drive past the church. Several shots rang out. Podraskey fell.
Mickey estimated five or six shots were fired. Another eyewitness, Ora Anderson, placed the number at four or five.
Seconds earlier, the car was stopped by pickets patrolling the Rowes Run Road. Steve Kuharik told police he dipped the American flag he was holding across the road. He spied two men inside the car.
Kuharik asked about the lunch pail in the car, evidence, perhaps, that one of the men was a strike breaker, a scab.
Another picketing miner, Arthur Reese, walked in back of the car; he thought he recognized one of the men inside as a company sheriff.
Kuharik hollered ahead, “Look out, here comes a yellow dog.” The car drove off, rounded a corner. Kuharik heard shots.
It turned out the two men in the car – William C. Brown and Jack Brosius – were injured as well. Brown was the most seriously hurt, with a laceration above his left ear that required 25 stitches. Brown was vomiting. “He was very much shocked and very sick,” the doctor in Smock who treated the men told authorities.
The doc asked what happened. Brown and Brosius said they had been stopped by pickets at a series of checkpoints on the road near Rowes Run. After being allowed to proceed, they heard someone yell, “Yellow dog,” a vile epitaph in Coal Country. A shower of rocks followed and Brosius opened fire.
At Star Junction picketing, Robert Russin was confronted by a deputy sheriff, who pressed a pistol against his stomach. “Go ahead and fire,” Russin reportedly said. He told investigators he heard a second deputy say to still other deputies, “Cock up your guns and fire.”
At least four men were gunned down in the melee that followed. Donald Slagle, hit thirteen times by buckshot, told state police he followed along behind deputies to the picket line “I walked up there … tear gas went off in the crowd and I turned to come back down and I got it.”
Pickets and bystanders were also shot at Edenborn and Allison 3 and Allison 4.
The New York Times put the number of dead and wounded at 25, including three deputies.
The H.C. Frick Company shuttered its mines in the wake of the shootings. Other coal companies followed. One person in “close contact with officials” told the Times “the mines never would have opened … if the operators knew what they know now.”
There had never been such a day. There hasn’t been one since, though more bloody days were ahead as the miners’ strike continued.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.