It was a rainy afternoon, Oct. 12, 1898, when a 15-minute gun battle left 13 dead in Macoupin County.
The Battle of Virden, as it’s now known, is regarded as a pivotal moment in national labor history and the Illinois coal wars. Famed labor activist Mary Harris Jones, known as “Mother Jones,” chose to be buried in nearby Mount Olive alongside some of the miners killed that day.
Today, a bronze monument stands on the corner of Virden’s town square, quietly commemorating the century-old conflict. George Rishel, 81, is a Virden resident and owner of The Sly Fox Bookstore. He was among those who erected the monument in 2006.
Rishel recalled how taboo the topic was when he was growing up and just how sensitive it remains today. “Even when we did that monument over there, I had a couple of people call me up and think it was just a bad idea. They wanted to bury it in the past like it never happened,” said Rishel.
The Battle of Virden is the backdrop of an upcoming novel by author N.J. Schrock, a former resident of the community. The book, titled "Morning of a Crescent Moon," is set to be released sometime this fall and explores the conflict by “fusing historical truth with imagined lives.”
The Battle of Virden originated when the Chicago Virden Coal Co. rejected a nationwide agreement with the United Mine Workers of America. The deal guaranteed miners a pay raise of 40 cents per ton of coal. It also sought to reduce workdays to eight-hour shifts, six days a week.
In response, the operators of the coal company shut out miners unwilling to accept their preferred 30-cents-per-ton rate. An armed stockade was also erected around the mine's perimeter.
The Virden mine was among the largest coal mines in Illinois at the time, employing about 400 miners to work a seam 300 feet below the surface. By the time of the shooting, many of the community’s miners had been out of work for over a year.
As a strikebreaking initiative, the coal company hired 105 non-union African American miners from Alabama, paying them 30 cents per ton. The Alabama miners were uninformed of the ongoing strike happening in Virden.
While Virden had a marginal community of black miners at the time, the racial animus of the battle has remained a contentious topic. In the years following the battle, Virden earned a reputation as a sundown town.
Members of the Thiel Detective Service Co. boarded the strikebreakers’ train in East St. Louis, armed with Winchester rifles. Trouble was expected.
Upon the train’s arrival in Virden, it was quickly swarmed by around 1,200 armed local miners. To this day, the party responsible for firing the first shot remains unknown. Of the 13 killed, eight were local miners, four were mine guards, and one was a switchboard operator. Non-fatal injuries were documented on both sides.
In the wake of the incident, union membership among the UMWA skyrocketed. The following month, the coal company capitulated to terms they had initially refuted. Memories of the battle still linger in the community.
There are still people living who recall hearing first-person accounts. “He used to come to our house for Sunday dinner,” said Rishel, sharing his recollections of a former Virden resident who was present at the battle.
“He climbed up a telephone pole to get a better look at what was happening, and he said he could hear one bullet whiz by on one side and another bullet whiz by on the other side, and he thought it might be a good idea to get down.”
Another perspective of the battle came from 83-year-old John Alexander, a fellow monument erector and owner of Books on the Square.
“The thought when I was growing up was that just a bunch of coal miners got drunk one day and decided to riot,” said Alexander. “For the most part, none of that proved to be true.”
Alexander, who's been researching the subject since the mid-1960s, has strived to preserve the story of the battle with historical accuracy.
“It’s a gruesome story, but it’s an important story. I think people are more open to discussing (the battle) and have to discuss it now that we’ve built a really important mine monument.