Patrick Comerford
This is May Day, and in Crete Easter is just days away. And I have a May Day story today from Rethymnon that links Crete, workers’ rights and struggles, and Easter.
The Marina in Rethymnon is lined with a number of impressive, modern sculptures. But in a discreet, shaded corner behind the Delfini building at the entrance to the Marina, almost facing the first apartment where I stayed in Rethymnon in the 1980s, is a bust of Louis Tikas (1884-1914), a trade union organiser who was murdered 110 years ago in the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado in April 1914.
Louis Tikas (Λούης Τίκας) was born Elias Anastasios Spantidakis (Ηλίας Αναστάσιος Σπαντιδάκης) on 13 March 1886 in Loutra, a small hillside village 8 km outside Rethymnon.
When he left Crete for America in 1906, his brother Kostis Spantidakis accompanied Louis to Rethymno by horse, and from there Louis took the boat to Piraeus. On his way home, Kostis was overwhelmed by premonitions of doom and, when he returned home, he told his wife, ‘Argyro, this man will one day either become a great man or he will end up destroying himself (θα φάει το κεφάλι του). And we will lose him.’
When he set foot on Ellis Island, he signed his first papers with a new name. By 1910, he was the part owner of a Greek coffeehouse in Denve,r Colorado, and filed for US citizenship. He then worked for a time as a miner in Colorado’s Northern coalfield, and ended up leading a walk-out by 63 fellow Greeks at the Frederick, Colorado mine.
Tikas was chased from the northern field, and was shot and wounded by Baldwin-Felts detectives as he escaped through the back door of a boarding house in Lafayette, Colorado, in January 1910.
Due to the immense respect Tikas had gained among the miners, the United Mineworkers’ Union appointed him a union organiser in Trinidad, Colorado. By the end of 1912, he was an organiser for the United Mine Workers of America. By then, he was a good friend of Mother Jones and they worked together in the final months of 1913, when Tikas played a leading role in organising the Colorado miners when they went on strike.
The 14-month strike between September 1913 and December 1914 became known as the Colorado Coalfield War in southern Colorado,. It has been described as ‘the bloodiest civil insurrection in American history since the Civil War.’
Support for strike was solid among the miners, many of them Greek. When the strike meant the miners and their families could no longer live in the mining company shacks, Tikas was to the forefront in organising camps where they could live.
In all, up to 20,000 strikers were evicted from the company towns that dotted the coal-rich Sangre de Christo region. Tikas and the union raised a number of tent cities, including the Ludlow Colony.
The camps were constantly attacked by the militia and the gunmen hired by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, owned by John D Rockefeller jr. Tikas helped many miners and their families to escape from the Ludlow camp to the nearby hills. But by then he had become a marked man.
Following a tense day of Greek Orthodox Easter festivities, Tikas met Major Pat Hamrock (1860-1939), the leading and Irish-born militia officer, on the morning 20 April 1914 in response to allegations of a man being held against his will in the camp.
During Hamrock’s conversation with Tikas, the Greeks in the camp grew restless. The militia placed machineguns on the hills and Tikas, anticipating trouble, ran back to camp.
But fighting broke out and lasted all day. During the clash, a deserted tent burst into flames and, within a short time, more tents began to burn. At the same time, the militiamen overran and took command of the site. By 7 pm, the camp was aflame.
Tikas remained in the camp the entire day and was there when the fire started. Lieutenant Karl Linderfelt, a rival of Tikas during much of the strike, broke the butt of his gun over Tikas’s head. Tikas was later found shot to death, one bullet through his back, another in his hip, a third glancing off his hip and traveling vertically through his body.
The Ludlow Massacre on 20 April 1914 was the bloodiest event in the strike. During the massacre, 19 people were killed, including two women and 11 children and one National Guardsman. The day Louis Tikas was murdered, 20 April 1914, was ‘Bright Monday’, the day after Greek Orthodox Easter. He was just 28.
By early morning, 21 April1914, a site once covered by hundreds of tents was nothing more than the charred rubble remains of the tents. The bodies of two women and 11 children were found huddled together in a cellar. Five strikers, two other children, and at least four men associated with the militia also died.
Sporadic violence continued for days after, and more people died in battles at a number of coal camps. Federal troops moved into southern Colorado in late April. However, the strike continued until early December, and came to an end without resolution.
The Ludlow Monument, erected by the United Mine Workers of America some years after the massacre, stands near the site to commemorate the dead strikers and their families.
But the strikers had not suffered in vain. His memorial in Rethymnon recalls that the heroic death of Louis Tikas, the strike and the violence encouraged state and federal legislators to pass laws ‘protecting the rights, dignity and respect of the working class.’
The young man has become a Greek-American legend and a national labour icon, inspiring songs of defiance, remembrance, and redemption. Both Tikas and Ludlow live on in the songs of Woody Guthrie. The bust of Louis Tikas at the Marina in Rethymnon was a gift ‘to the land of his birth’ from members of the Pancretan Association of America in July 2009.
A statue of Louis Tikas was dedicated at the Miners’ Memorial on Mani Street in Trinidad, Colorado, on 23 June 2018.
A documentary film Palikari – Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre, produced by Lamprini C Thoma and directed by Nichos Ventouras in 2014, tells his story, from Crete to Colorado.
Palikari – Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre
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