Italian Hall Memorial Park
Calumet, Michigan
This memorial marks the site of one of the most tragic events of Michigan’s 1913–1914 Copper Country miners’ strike. On Christmas Eve, 1913, families of striking miners gathered for a holiday party at Italian Hall, a two-story building owned by the Società Mutua Beneficenza Italiana (Italian Mutual Benefit Society).
During the celebration, someone falsely shouted “Fire!” Panic spread through the crowded upstairs hall. As people rushed to escape, the stairway doors reportedly jammed amid the crush of bodies. Seventy-three people died in the disaster, more than half of them children.
The tragedy became one of the most haunting episodes in U.S. labor history and was later memorialized in the song “1913 Massacre” by Woody Guthrie.
Details on the LHF Labor Landmarks Map.
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