1913 Italian Hall Disaster was a Michigan Christmas Eve tragedy

CALUMET, MI - When you first hear the details behind the 1913 Italian Hall Disaster, the tragedy seems too terrible to be real.

Imagine a crowded Christmas Eve party inside a large social hall at the heart of the Upper Peninsula's Copper Country. Most of the guests are union miners' families, glad for some holiday cheer because they're five months into a labor strike.

Someone falsely yells “Fire!” and hundreds of people on the second floor panic, causing a stampede down a steep stairwell as they all try to get outside. Seventy-three people died on the stairs, 59 of them children. The youngest was just 2. There was never any fire.

It was the largest mining-related disaster to occur in Michigan. The fact that it happened above ground - and that most of its victims were children enjoying a Christmas party - made it even more heartbreaking, researchers say.

That it happened against the backdrop of a bitter labor strike added a harsh political edge, and tore the grief-stricken community apart.

Speculation was that the false fire call came from an anti-union person, perhaps affiliated with mine management, who wanted to break up the striking workers' party. Several witnesses in a federal inquest in 1914 testified that one of the people seen yelling "Fire!" had an anti-union button on his coat.

No one was ever charged with the crime.

This event has become a touchstone for tiny Calumet, which sits in the middle of the Keweenaw Peninsula. But why does this tragedy still resonate a century later?

It goes beyond the sheer number of victims and the unusual details of their deaths.

"The Italian Hall tragedy by far impacted women and children the most. This wasn't an accident that happened underground. The primary victims here were women and children," said Jo Holt, a historian with the National Park Service's Keweenaw National Historical Park who is well-versed on the event.

"It happened in a time when women were labor leaders, and even children had strike parades. But this was different. These were innocent victims of the strike. So there was more weight, more emotion. This was a tragedy that affected families for generations - and still does."

This Christmas Eve, like in years past, 73 luminaries will be lit in a village park where the Italian Hall once stood. There is one light for each victim, placed by the Calumet Rotary Club. They will line a walkway leading to a sandstone and brick archway - the doorway into the building where they died.

A Strike in Red Jacket

Before it was called Calumet, the area was known as Red Jacket. And for many it seemed to be ground zero for the sprawling copper mining operations that absorbed wave after wave of immigrants into the Upper Peninsula.

Red Jacket itself was a company town for the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, a large firm that in the 1870s was known as the world's largest copper producer. For a time, C&H had the world's deepest copper mines.

But the company wasn't immune from the organized labor push that swept across the Keweenaw Peninsula and other parts of the U.P. in 1913. Miners in Montana and Colorado had unionized, and in July of that year, the Western Federation of Miners called a strike against all Copper Country mines. The were pushing for a $3 daily wage, 8-hour days, safer working conditions and representation, according to a mining journal published that year.

"The strike took place in a very complicated time in American history," said Holt. "We had all these different things coming together. An increasingly industrialized country was grappling with worker's rights, gender issues and immigration. We were moving from a gilded age into a progressive era, and recognizing the voice of labor.

"We see this event happen in the midst of that struggle."

"The reason it resonates today is we are still having these conversations. How do we create a just economy that functions for everybody? ... We are still, a hundred years later, in the midst of these conversations."

A Christmas Eve Party

As the strike wore into fall and the holiday season, a women's auxiliary group to the WFM organized a Christmas Eve party for the miners' families at the Italian Benevolent Society building, better known as the Italian Hall.

It was a big, boisterous affair, researchers have said. The multi-story hall was packed, with more than 600 people inside at one point. Children were watching a play and receiving gifts. Organizers later said the crowd was so large it was hard to keep track of who was coming in the door.

When the false cry of "Fire!" went up, there was pandemonium to reach the sole stairway leading down to the street.

"What happened is when people panicked, they tried to get out through the stairwell," Holt said. "Someone tripped or people started to fall, and that's what created the bottleneck. It was just people falling on top of each other."

The aftermath horrifying. As the dead were pulled from the pile in the stairwell, they were carried to the town hall, which turned into a makeshift morgue. Some families lost more than one child. Other children were orphaned when their parents died.

One black and white photo in the Michigan Technological University Archives shows rows of what looks like sleeping children laying side-by-side. Their eyes are closed. Their faces unmarred. The caption reads: "Christmas Eve in the Morgue."

The Aftermath

Even a mining town that dealt with its share of deaths wasn't prepared for this kind of mass casualty event.

Coffins were express shipped to Calumet. The next few days saw a flurry of cooperation between funeral homes and churches as caskets were filled - small white ones with flowers atop for the children - and horse-drawn hearses were arranged.

Emotions ran high. Writers for a Finnish newspaper were arrested on Dec. 27, 1913 when a story was printed that branded the deaths as murder, according to Rebels on the Range, a book about the strike by Arthur Thurner.

But on Dec. 28, the day of the massive funeral procession, pro-union sentiment dominated.

Strikers had dug multiple long trench-style graves at Lake View Cemetery, about two miles outside of Calumet. Some were for Protestants, some for Catholics. The remaining victims were buried in other graves.

After funerals at a handful of churches around town, smaller processions "merged onto Pine Street into a single procession of caskets, hearses and mourners on their way to the road that led to the cemetery," his book describes.

The funerals drew 20,000 spectators to Calumet, sometimes standing four-deep on the street as the procession passed them.

Five hundred iron miners from other U.P. towns had arrived by train to join the procession, Thurner said, along with a brass band and a chorus of strikers singing hymns.

Thousands of people marched the long road to the cemetery. Union men hoisted the children's caskets while horse-drawn sleds or hearses carried the adult's coffins, the book said.

It was a graveside service that stretched past sunset. Eulogies were delivered in Croatian, Finnish and English. Photos show a huge crowd remained for the speeches, with some climbing trees for a better view.

Moving On

After the dead were buried, some families moved away. Others stayed and kept supporting the strike, which ended the following spring.

Rumors emerged later that the Italian Hall's doors were designed to open inward, preventing the panicked crowd from pushing them outward to the street. Those were debunked, along with the suggestion in Woody Guthrie's "1913 Massacre" song that mining company thugs were holding the doors shut from the outside that night.

Joanne Thomas, a local committee member for the Italian Hall Victims' Memorial, said research has shown that deep divisions between Calumet's strikers and company men lasted decades after the Italian Hall deaths.

"Some couldn't bear to speak of it. The community just wanted to forget it, and ignore it and bury it," Thomas said. "That is how people dealt with tragedy in the past, without the counseling tools that we have today."

Those schisms seem to have been passed down in the DNA. As the century-anniversary of 2013 approached, Thomas said she still encountered some people who held tight to their suspicions. But then came an amazing change. As they all worked together on exhibits, cultural events and lectures, all planning for the 100th commemoration, it became a time of healing, she said.

Looking Ahead

The old Italian Hall itself was razed in 1984, and the village park at the site was designed a few years later. The two lots on either side are owned by the NPS's Keweenaw National Historical Park, which helps the village with maintenance and interpretive work.

There have been improvements made over the years. A wayfinding plaque about the Italian Hall Disaster tells visitors the basic story, and the old hall's sandstone and brick arch stands at the site as a silent marker to the 73 deaths. Plantings and benches make it a contemplative spot.

A Michigan Technological University professor and his students also have been involved in helping the village and NPS assess the site for future improvements. A project in 2012 identified old buildings' boundaries.

They used remote-sensing equipment and ground-penetrating radar to see the features underground. They mapped the site, then superimposed it on historic maps. "Where were the sensitive areas, and where did construction crews need to be careful?" said Tim Scarlett, associate professor of anthropology and archeology.

For local students who already knew the story, the hands-on work offered a new perspective. “It’s a very different kind of thing than learning about it in elementary school,” Scarlett said. “You become really much more intimate with it. It’s so much more tangible.”

A NEW MEMORIAL

More than a year ago, a new 10-foot-tall memorial was installed at the park. It was a labor of love - and fundraising and planning and pushing ahead - from Thomas and many other community volunteers who wanted to see a more specific reminder of those who died in the Italian Hall. The new monument will carry the name and age of each victim.

But more than these visible reminders, there also seems to be some type of invisible thread that links people in this small town to the memory of that snowy Christmas Eve in 1913.

Holt remembers her first anniversary pilgrimage. Shortly after moving to the area, she stopped at the memorial park on a Christmas Eve to pay her respects.

As she watched, she was amazed at how many people came to spend a few minutes. "It was a steady flow of people coming by with their children. There were always other people there who had stopped to have some quiet time.

“It was very wonderful to see just how well the community remembers this. It’s still such a personal event for so many people.”