The Killing of Fannie Sellins in the Steel Strike
"A dozen drunken deputy sheriffs on strike duty, led by a mine official, suddenly rushed the pickets, shooting as they came. Joseph Strzelecki [sic.] fell, mortally wounded. Mrs. Sellins, standing close by, rushed to get some children out of danger. Then she came back to plead with the deputies, who were still clubbing the prostrate Strzelecki, not to kill him."
The mine official snatched a club and felled the woman to the ground.
This was not on company ground, but just outside the fence of a friend of Mrs.
Sellins.
She rose and tried to drag herself toward the gate
[The official] shouted: "Kill that bitch!
Three shots were fired, each taking effect.
One of the deputies,
standing over the motionless and silent body, held his gun down and, without
averting his face, fired into the body that did not move.
An auto truck hurried to
the scene and the body of the old miner thrown in; then Mrs. Sellins was dragged
by the heels to the back of the car. Before she was placed in the truck, a
deputy took a cudgel and crushed in her skull before the eyes of the throng of
men, women and children, who stood in powerless silence before the armed men.
[One of the deputies] picked up the woman's hat, placed it on his head, danced a
step, and said to the crowd:
"I'm Mrs. Sellins
now."
-New
Majority, September 20, 1919,
One witness to the
shooting was Stanley F. Rafalko, a seven- year-old boy who was out on an errand
for his mother. Sixty years later, he described what he saw. He noticed
"three or four uniformed deputies parked in a maroon touring car talking to
some local steelworkers." He went into a store, and when he came out,
"the coal mine police were chasing the fellows with billy clubs."
Rafalko followed the
chase, and when he caught up, Sellins was "scolding" the deputies.
Says, Rafalko, "They used abusive language and tried to chase her
away." The crowd increased, and Sellins "got more aggressive."
Rafalko recalled that someone brought rifles to the deputies. When a deputy
rushed forward to kick Sellins, according to Rafalko she ran into his uncle's
yard. Three deputies then fired at her. Joseph Starzeleski, a local steelworker
who came to see what was happening, also was shot and killed.
According to Rafalko, the
deputies dispersed, and he approached Sellins "where she lay in the gateway
in her wide- rimmed straw hat." The boy went over to her. He "picked
her hat up and looked at her face and saw her false teeth lying in blood."
He ran away when he heard a car coming up the hill, but he saw deputies pull
Starzeleski into the back of the car. Then, "they grabbed [Sellins] by the
back of the neck and threw her into the car."
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| The inscription read: "In Memory of Fannie Sellins and Joe Starzeleski, killed by the enemies of organized labor, near the Allegheny Steel and Coal Company, at West Natrona, Pa." |