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Contacts: 

Leslie Weddell
(719) 389-6038          
Leslie.Weddell@ColoradoCollege.edu
                                   

COLORADO COLLEGE HOSTS THREE-DAY SYMPOSIUM
ON DEADLY LUDLOW MASSACRE

‘The Ludlow Massacre: History, Memory, Writing’ features trip to site

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – March. 26, 2009 – Colorado College is hosting a three-day symposium titled “The Ludlow Massacre: History, Memory, Writing” on April 9-11. The symposium features lectures and panel discussions led by journalists, professors and authors, as well as a trip to the site of the deadly 1914 massacre, where participants will tour the battlefield and nearby sites. The first two days’ events are free; there is a $10 fee for the bus to Ludlow on the third day.

The Ludlow Massacre refers to the violent deaths of 20 people, 11 of them children, during an attack by the Colorado National Guard on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, outside Trinidad in southern Colorado, on April 20, 1914. These deaths occurred after a day-long fight between strikers and the Guard. Two women, eleven children, one National Guardsman and six miners and union officials were killed.

Writers have called the Ludlow Massacre, which effectively ended the southern Colorado coal war, the bloodiest labor conflict in American history. Recently, the Ludlow Massacre has produced a series of books – history, journalism, poetry and fiction – that have brought the events and debate about them back into light.

The symposium on Ludlow will raise questions about what happened that day, and the panel discussions and workshops will focus on the difficulty of dealing with narrations of the event, problems in teaching the history and the challenges in writing about Ludlow. The symposium is geared to secondary-school teachers and educators from El Paso, Teller, Huerfano and Douglas counties, professors, amateur and professional historians, United Mine Workers of America union members and leaders, archeologists, creative writers, students and all other interested parties.

Symposium speakers will include:

• Thomas Andrews, assistant professor of history, University of Colorado Denver and author of "Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War" (2008).
• Anne Hyde, professor of history and director of Hulbert Center for Southwest Studies, Colorado College.
• Scott Martelle, journalist and author of "Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West" (2008).
• David Mason, professor of English, Colorado College and author of "Ludlow, a verse novel" (2007), which won the Colorado Book Award for Poetry.
• Maria Montoya, associate professor of history, New York University, and author of "Translating Property: The Maxwell Land Grant and the Conflict over Land in the American West, 1840–1940" (2002). She also is working on a book on the Colorado Fuel & Iron, Co.
• Zeese Papanikolas, writer and author of "Buried Unsung: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre" (1991).

All events, except the trip to Ludlow, take place in various rooms in Armstrong Hall, 14 E. Cache La Poudre St., on the Colorado College campus.

Contact Jaimie Stevenson at (719) 389-6317 or jstevenson@coloradocollege.edu for more information. The symposium is sponsored by the Demarest Lloyd Lecture Fund, William Jovanovich Lecture in Public Affairs Fund and the Hulbert Center for Southwest Studies.

For information, directions or disability accommodation at the event, members of the public may call (719) 389-6607.

About Colorado College
Colorado College is a nationally prominent, four-year liberal arts college that was founded in Colorado Springs in 1874. The college operates on the innovative Block Plan, in which its 1,985 undergraduate students study one course at a time in intensive 3½-week blocks. The college also offers a master of arts in teaching degree. For more information, visit www.ColoradoCollege.edu <http://www.ColoradoCollege.edu>.