United Mine Workers Press Photo Archive of Labor Leader John L. Lewis, Union Support, and Police Violence in Coal Country, 1924-43

United Mine Workers John L. Lewis

Photograph

[Mining][Labor Organizing] United Mine Workers press photo group depicting labor leaders, wage negotiations, and congressional testimony during the violent coal labor conflicts that reshaped American industrial relations from the 1920s and 1940s. John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers of America, was a dominant labor figure in the American coal industry after the union’s rapid expansion during the New Deal and the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935, which guaranteed collective bargaining rights for industrial workers. One caption records the anthracite convention in Scranton, Pennsylvania in March 1943, where miners demanded a two dollar daily wage increase during wartime coal shortages that threatened steel production and rail transport across the United States. Another image preserves Senate committee testimony connected to the 1937 Harlan County investigations in Kentucky, when shootings, evictions, blacklisting, and armed confrontations between miners, deputies, and coal operators turned the region into the nationally publicized “Bloody Harlan.”

Photo archive of 5 silver gelatin press photographs, ranging from approximately 6 x 8 to 8 x 10 inches Scranton, Pennsylvania and related coal labor locations, circa 1930s-1940s. Lewis sits beside fellow labor officials and clergy during convention discussions; elsewhere he stands at the head of a long conference table addressing union delegates in dark suits gathered around rough wooden boards. A street scene shows Lewis walking alone in overcoat and fedora through a downtown commercial district, while an earlier press image captures him and other union leaders assembled at Union Station awaiting the arrival of Samuel Gompers’s body, demonstrating the mutual respect and support between the AFL and UMW leadership. The most graphic image shows Thomas Ferguson displaying a bullet-torn undershirt before a Senate Civil Liberties Committee investigation into Harlan County violence, with the Harris and Ewing caption explaining that deputies allegedly fired the shots that entered Ferguson’s shoulder and exited through his back. Versos retain typed wire-service captions, editorial crop marks, publication stamps, grease-pencil notations, and date stamps including “Mar 31 1943” and “Dec 22 1924.”

Coal labor struggles during these years produced some of the largest strikes and labor confrontations in American history, including the nationwide mine shutdowns that pressured Franklin Roosevelt’s administration during World War II and helped establish federal wartime seizure of mines in 1943. The group documents leaders in organized labor and industrial conflict during the high point of American union power. Minor edge chipping to one image, scattered editorial markings and light surface wear; else good to very good condition.

Item #23459

Price: $500.00