00:00:04 Oh my goodness. I wanted to admire that thumbnail from Wes there. That was a good job, Wes. Look at that, y'all. Look at this. Hang. Sorry. Okay. I just needed a moment. That's cool. Good job, Wes. I mean, as always, making the great thumbnails. Uh, so grateful for him and all that he does for this show. Welcome to this edition of At the Mic. This is the Thursday deep dive. I'm your host, Keith Malanac. I will say that if you recall a few weeks ago uh we had some issues. X was getting hacked and uh that was a big

00:00:39 to-do and and we were scrambling to get on the air and this week uh the issue was Streamyard was down and it's still down and so uh I'm grateful for my resilient guest. I sent the backup link to her so we're using that. Uh so that's why things might look a little different here this week. But uh we're here everybody and that is so exciting. And I will say I'm I'm just full disclosure, you know, I like to share overshare even uh with you the audience. Um Matilda is currently uh at my feet right now

00:01:13 licking it. I don't know how long I'm going to be able to uh tolerate uh the puppy doing this. You got to stop, girl. Stop. Okay. So anyhow, uh I'm trying to get Is the chat up, y'all? because uh things are different and I really hope that you have that outlet and if you don't I apologize because I don't know what I'm doing. Let's put it that way. But hopefully the X chat has So yeah, I see LEP over there. Okay, cool. All right. Very good. All right. Yay. We're going to make it. We're going to make it, y'all. Uh so today's deep dive

00:01:45 focuses on a little known tragedy in American history. Uh, it's an event that until the last few years I knew nothing about and I love history and I can't wait to get into this conversation with you. And I mentioned Wes. Uh, thank you to all that that you do uh for this show, Hero Wes, with the thumbnails and for uh he putts the show. make sure that it's uh up later tonight, I think at 8:00 Eastern on YouTube and Rumble and uh obviously tomorrow morning on Spotify, iTunes, the audio versions. I I

00:02:23 tell you, I'm going to get Matilda up here because stop. Oh my goodness. Y'all got it. She's She's in here. She's lurking today and causing a ruckus down there. So, um uh thank you, Wes, to all you do. At the mikeshow.com is where you can find all of the links uh for this show. Thank you to Gabby uh for all that you do with the uh Instagram channel that you started on your own and you maintain it. You put great stuff over there. I'm so grateful for y'all. Uh don't forget over on X Wes is that guy at PGU. Gabby is

00:02:54 JeffyApologist. I these are two people that do herculean things for this program and they do it. They don't ask for anything and I just I love him to death and I'm so grateful. If you missed last week's deep dive, oh my goodness, it was a doozy with Ashton Forbes. We talked about missing Malaysian Airlines flight 370. Uh for 11 years that plane has been missing, all traces of it. And he has just continued for several years now continued to unlock doors to incredible uh technologies associated with that missing flight. And the

00:03:28 mystery continues. So, uh, if you missed that, it's pinned to the top here with all the, uh, I don't know what we counted up, 250 something different conversations we've had over the years. All pinned to the top here of the X page. Uh, so be sure to check that out, uh, as well, the complete archive waiting for you to peruse it. Now, America's history is very complicated. Uh, there's a lot of good in our nation's history, and there's also a lot of darkness in our story as well. And often times the stories of America's

00:04:00 darkest times, they don't see the light at day. They're buried. And and one of those uh stories is today's topic, the Lello massacre. I love driving out west. I tell y'all this all the time. There's not one place in the mountain time zone that I don't absolutely love. And I mean that. Like I serious. Everywhere in the mountain time zone I absolutely love. I love the mountains and I love history. And I end up in Colorado roughly every summer. Got to escape the heat from Texas whenever you can. And it was the summer of 2020.

00:04:31 I was driving south on Interstate 25. I was getting close to Trinidad, Colorado. And there was this exit marker and I was like, "Sure, I'll do this." Pull over there. Not a mile off the interstate is this ghost town. And I'll show you pictures that I've taken over the years. And it's Ledllo, Colorado. And there is a a historic marker there, a solemn, it's a solemn site for what happened there. And my guest will tell the story, but it's there in Lllo, Colorado. And it is something that I had never heard of and I was so pissed that

00:05:10 I'd never heard of it either. And I'll let her tell the story, but it's there in Lllo, Colorado. Happened 111 years ago. And when you hear the story, you'll soon learn not only why it's important to the labor movement in America, but you also learn about one of America's terrible tragedies that was completely unnecessary. So, I'm I've talked enough. Let me get my guest in here. Uh Dr. Fawn Amber Mononttoya from James Madison University. Uh she she's helped write this book uh that uh and and I know

00:05:48 you're busy. Oh my goodness. I do know that you're busy, doctor, because uh you have uh I should have see a good host would have already had your book cover ready. There it is. Um so Communities of Lello and I know that you're writing you're you're you tell me what you're writing right now. Um sure. So this B Can you hear me? Okay. Yep. You're great. Um, so this book that you see came out in 2022 and my colleague Karen Larkin and I worked on it for about nine years. Um, what I'm working on now, there's there's

00:06:21 a couple of projects, but one is called Ghosts of the Past and this, um, book should come out in the next two years, but it's looking at really folklore of the Southwest. Um, how names of different locations came to be. Um, the other book that I'm working on, which we're just really starting, is probably going to be called Families of Lello. I'm working very closely with the United Mine Workers through a National Park Service grant. Um, and we're starting to collect um and expand on um oral histories of the descendants of both

00:06:50 survivors and victims of the Lobo massacre. Okay. So, where do you want to start this story? Because the event takes place in 1914, but it was something that was brewing long before that. Correct. Yeah. So the event can start in a couple of different points. Um the first one can start at the rise of the second industrial revolution as the United States is growing because of the um increase of electricity. Um you start having an increase of immigrant labor coming into the United States. This is after the US war with Mexico. So

00:07:24 the borderlands of the United States are sort of now become the United States being um attached to Mexico. um you start seeing um people migrating um across the nation um because of the railroad. Um and it really sort of starts in after the US war with Mexico when you have a man by the name of William Jackson Palmer um who is a geologist who will head to Colorado and as he's visiting Colorado he know notices that in um along the Rocky Mountains or the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in southeastern Colorado that

00:07:58 it is an area um where coal is present. Um so that's that's one place to start it. Um I also started much earlier earlier than that this was native land um that it continues to be indigenous peoples of the region um and descendants of these peoples that still migrate back and forth across this area. Um but it's native land. If you um look if you're coming if you're heading north and you look to the west you'll see the Spanish peaks or the wajatoyas which were part of the um Sanre de Cristo range. um of

00:08:31 the Rocky Mountains. Um and then that indigenous story um continues on to that this was a land that was colonized by the Spanish um owned by Mexicans, then owned um by um uh Texas will claim it. Um but then Texas still likes to try to claim Colorado. Um and then but then yeah, I I I have the map downstairs and it's it's so fun how it used to go straight up really narrow all the way to Wyoming all that all that way. Um so so that's also part of the story. Um and so I always kind of say like this is very

00:09:04 much a story of of the land um of this space that is um ends up being used by a lot of different um types of people for many different reasons. Um, so that's kind of the background that I always like um to remind people is that when we look at the history of the West and really the United States that this is a history of the native peoples um and that native peoples as they have um struggled to maintain their land, struggled to maintain their history and their culture um in a space that is um constantly being colonized by European

00:09:35 powers. Um and then ultimately that the United States seeing this as um part of their manifest destiny to expand westward and being um guided and um by God to do this, but that these people never left. Um and so that in this region you have um what some historians will refer to as Espanos, Indo, Espanos, um people that are no. So, southern Colorado is really this borderlands region that that history and culture of um multithnic communities has always um existed in this space. Um so, so and I was just curious, so when do they

00:10:12 actually say, "Hey, we need to start pulling out some of this coal like when when did that start?" 1880s to 1890s. Um and so in 1880, you have Jackson who comes out. It's also that Cole is also very much about running the railroad. Um, and so Palmer, William Jackson Palmer is also invested in building a railroad line um, from Denver into Santa Fe. Um, and so this is all part of a broader story of westward expansion. Um, and then it's also about who ends up mining this coal. So you have large populations of these spanos that will

00:10:45 mine this coal and then you'll start seeing a large influx of immigrants coming from across all over the world. um in the coal mines of this region there's 19 to 21 different languages that end up being spoken um and so you'll start seeing a large influx of peoples that um might have settled might have come through first um Ellis Island um you'll have another group that will come through at Galveastston um late 1880s early 1890s and then you'll continue to see this migration westward and then those Espanos people stay there

00:11:15 you'll also see migrations and immigrations of people that are coming um through Angel Island in California as So this Go ahead. No, no. I I I didn't want to interrupt you. I just wanted to kind of just get on the screen here because to I mean the train goes right there. In fact, it's I mean it's it's just off to the right there. Uh because there's a road and then there's a a a river. Yeah. The train is right at that foothill. So if you see that foothills, the train runs right across and the train becomes very important to the

00:11:41 story because the train is how you transport coal, but it's also how you get people into this region. And and what's so amazing is you want to talk about living history, when you go there, these buildings that were there for this event in 1914, many of them are still there. That's the only one I've got on that page there. Um, but it's just it's truly fascinating uh just to go there and and see that firsthand. I it it and it's almost shocking. It's shocking that that uh that it's so accessible and that there's

00:12:14 nothing really made of this beyond that marker that I'll I'll show in a little bit. But I mean, you can go into these buildings. I mean, it's like it's like it's frozen in time, doctor. I mean, it's absolutely it's truly it's it's just it's amazing the the history that is right there just sitting there doing rotting away. Well, and so I think it's important that the co there was a lot of coal mines throughout southeastern Colorado. So, um, southeastern Colorado, it's, um, producing coal and iron, um,

00:12:43 north of, uh, Trinidad. It was is an old steel mill that there's still some production there today because the company by the early, um, 1900s is actually owned by a company called the Color Fuel and Iron Company. Um, and it is involved in both horizontal and vertical integration. This is um, this idea of monopolies that are emerging um, in the 20th century. And so I always think that the railroad um is sort of this connection. It's almost like the vein going through the um body of the west um and really making that

00:13:13 connection. That's a great way to describe it. Yeah. Both from it's it's Trinidad Lllo but then it's PBLO and then into Denver and then Denver all the way across the nation. Um, and so I think that the fact that the railroad is still there still serves as that constant marker of really how long this land had been industrialized for. Um, and there's a lot of different um, old coal mining towns in the region. Most of the roads um, coming off are old coal mining areas. There's a a place called Elmoro that you'll see a sign for. There

00:13:44 was a Elmoro mine. Wenberg was actually Camp Walson. There's a lot of coal mines up from that region. Um, and if you go up some of these canyons, not that I encourage it because there are private land owners in this area. They don't always love um people going there, so you don't hear it from me. Um, but in a couple of canyons, you'll see old coke ovens. Um, uh, and then you'll see um you'll still you'll still see the um the coal on the coal seams on the sides um of the mountains. Um, so it's definitely

00:14:16 if you spend a couple of hours there, um, I I live in Virginia now, but as soon as we went to West Virginia, I'm always amazed at how how much similarity there is, but definitely being able to see those coal seams. Yeah. So my son and I, we actually drove instead of instead of turning around and going back to the interstate like usual. We just kept going past the uh uh the the memorial and just wound our way, you know, down to Lake Trinidad. If anyone's familiar with the area, I mean, we took the back road, just straight up gravel

00:14:48 and and saw all of these sites that you're talking about that uh what what are those ovens though that you mentioned? They're coke ovens. What is that? So in or so the in order to the the coal in southern Colorado has to be heated to a certain temperature to make it harder and then that's it becomes coke and coke is what's used to create steel because the coal coming out of the mines is too soft and so they'll actually produce the coke at um the locations and so they're almost like these beehive shaped brick ovens um and

00:15:23 you'll see them most prominently there's a little bit up um the lello or bourbon canyon, but there's a place called Cokeale um in southern Colorado that has a lot of these still in existence, and I think it's Highway 12 um the Highway of Legends that they still sit along. Okay. So, coal mining, never in history has been an easy gig. That has been just I mean, you read stories and the conditions and and you read the stories of the conditions today. take us back to over a hundred years ago to this region,

00:15:55 what a typical day was like, who these laborers were and and who employed them because that really sets the stage where we go into 1914. Sure. Um so initially it's not a monopoly. The um individuals that are owning the companies, there's a lot of different types of smaller companies um that are in the region. It will um I think it's Colorado coal and iron company at some point, but it really becomes big in about 1903 when John D. Rockefeller senior will purchase um the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.

00:16:28 Um and the Rockefeller family will own it from 1903 to about 1942. They'll be the majority stock owners um in the company. Um and then Rockefeller Senior really um lets John D. Rockefeller Jr. handle um the operations of the larger um corporation. Um but they are I really kind of call them as absentee land owners or absentee business owners. Um most of it is left to people on the ground. Um but Rockefeller owned business and Rockefeller um like he did with US Steel is very focused on building his wealth making this

00:17:01 monopoly. Um Rockefeller is still considered to be one of the wealthiest Americans that ever lived. And so just to kind of give you an idea is that from Rockefeller's perspective it was both a vertical and a horizontal monopoly. So the idea of a a vertical monopoly is that he would own um all of the like means and production up. So he's going to own the land, he's going to own the coal mines, he's going to own the railroad, he's going to own the steel mill. So it's this idea of when you think about the means of production,

00:17:28 it's all the way up. That's why the way I explain to my students is like if you own the oil fields, if you own the gas stations, if you know the cars, if you own the railroads, right? You own all of that. Um and then it's also horizontal is that he controls all of the coal mines in the region. Um and so really from 1903 to about 194 new to the Rockefeller family um through um their corporation owns that region. Um and then their employees um are like I said coming from 19 to 20 um1 different um

00:18:00 languages that are spoken there. you see a lot of Greeks, Italians, Slavs, um specifically um they had come over really starting in 1808 till mainly about 1910, 1914 is really when you see most of them. A lot of the people that are living in this region might be second or third generation um in the United States. So not everybody is like brand new recent immigrants. Um they are very industrious, hardworking people. They're coming for the American dream. um there's a lot of um political turmoil from where they're coming from. So they

00:18:31 sort of see the United States as a space for them to be able to um have greater um freedoms and to be able to really um build a life for themselves and for their families. Um you have a lot of them coming in as family units um as well. Um it's not necessarily single men that are coming or if it's single men that are coming initially, they're coming later. So, a lot of larger family units um that are in this region and that really plays into the tragedy of it all later uh when we talk about the victims.

00:19:01 But um okay, so we have um we have a a clear monopoly all the way up the food chain. Yep. We have uh workers who correct me if I'm wrong here and I may be wrong on this. Um, did they purposefully put uh laborers together that didn't speak uh the same language or am I just imagining that? No, they specifically put together workers that didn't speak the same language would believe that then they couldn't um unionize, right? It would be difficult to organize, right? Okay. Yeah. And so, um, when you look at that daytoday work,

00:19:37 um, is that really you have men that are leaving very early in the morning? Um it looks it looks different in different camps, but what will end up happening ultimately is that the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company will create mining colonies. Um and then in these mining colonies, the workers will live in companyowned homes. They will be forced to shop at the company store. They have to go to a company doctor. They are paid in company scripts, so they're actually being paid in US dollars. It's company-owned money. Um they're charged

00:20:09 they're charged rent in the homes. they're charged in the company's store. Um either they're not charged, it's not a discount that they're getting. Um they're paying for the doctor and so this system is created of of debt penage or wage slavery so that they are basically um unable to ever leave any harsh working conditions because the company controls everything and again literally down to the railroad. So if they wanted to leave, they would have had to catch the train, but then that train who controls the train is actually

00:20:38 owned um by this CO fuel iron company. So that so then the work day um the um the the men are only paid for what coal they bring out of the mountain. So they're not ever paid for what's called dead work. Um so in order to go into the mountain, you have to shovel and use a pickaxe going in. um dynamite is used regularly. Um and so they have to um cut the timbers to be able to then build basically the caves or the the scaffolding structure with wood to get into the mountain. They're not paid for any of that to actually get in. They're

00:21:16 only paid for the coal that they bring out. Um so that when they're bringing out the coal, the company hires the a wayment that is um this is unbelievable. Please explain this. So there's a check weman. So there's a guy at the scales who basically says when they bring the coal out, what is what is the weight? Um and most the times they would say the check weman would say um a ton is might be 2500 lb, not 2,000 lb. And so they would change what tonnage was. um or they would say there's too much rock in

00:21:52 this so we're either going to reduce that what that weight is or we're just not going to give you any um money for it at all. Um and that was actually one of the demands that happens in the strike of 1913 1914 is that the workers push specifically for hiring their own Czech waymen um because of um the way that as the further you go into the mountain the more unstable it becomes and so you'll have a lot of um industrial accidents. So you'll have mine collapses um you'll have mine explosions. Um the um 1912 and 1913 are

00:22:27 considered to be uh two of the most dangerous years in Colorado in regards to mine accidents. Um that doesn't include rock falls. Um my research on Matt on Lello um is actually um familybased. My great great my great great-grandfathers um came to Colorado and worked in the mines. Um one of them actually dies in 1891 from a rockfall at Almoro. Um and so the number of accidents just continues to increase um and increase. Um and the company really doesn't do anything about it. Um there's stories of the idea that a donkey was

00:22:59 worth more than a worker um because it was easier to replace a worker than it was to replace a donkey. Um their industrial accidents are blamed on um the worker rather than company um company situations. um the company doctor most of the time if there was a an incident where the worker was killed or hurt then it was usually blamed um on the worker um so usually a sun up to sun down um very very little leisure time if there is any leisure time it's usually a Sunday afternoon a lot of the men will

00:23:32 play baseball so regardless of their um background whether they're from Greece or Italy or anywhere else basil becomes very big in coal camps throughout southern Colorado it's it's beautiful just the fact that these men when they do have time, this is one of the ways that they're able to come together and communicate with each other. Yeah. Yeah. And um and and so they're living in tents. So they're not living in tents yet. So they're living in company they're living in company owned homes. Okay. Um and then what happens is that

00:24:00 because of these dangerous working conditions and the United Mine Workers are starting to come into the area to start unionizing them. um in September of 1913 after all these dangerous accidents they're having mine workers um representatives are having discussions about this um and then one of the mine workers organizers his name is Gerald Lipat he's killed in September of 1913 um he's shot at the streets of Trinidad specifically by individuals that are anti-UN um pretty much within a couple of days of him being shot the union um

00:24:30 will call for a strike um when the U workers agree to the strike and I'll I'll state here I usually say workers and their families because there's no way that wives weren't talked to about what's going to happen and there's no way that women um were not very worried about not just their husbands but their fathers and their brothers and their sons and so women's involvement in the strike and the support of the strike is very very important. Um so when the strike is declared because they had been

00:24:59 working living in company owned houses, they are evicted from their homes um from they will leave the canyons. There's a number of different tent colonies that are set up by the United Mine Workers. Um and so the group specifically at the Lelo tent colony um they will go and live in these tents starting in September of 1913. Um they will hold the strike until December of 1914. um after the massacre um they will rebuild the tent colony and then people will continue to live in that region. Okay. All right. So So the trouble is

00:25:32 starting in September of 1913 and that's with the uh the murder down in Trinidad which is uh I mean at the time and even today is is the biggest in the area. Um how how far is Trinidad from Lelo? It's about 12 miles. Okay. 12 miles. All right. And then Trindad's about 12 miles from uh the Colorado New Mexico border. Right. Okay. So uh so we're in southern Colorado. We're we're getting coal out of the foothills of the Rockies. Um the labor conditions are intense and dangerous. Um how many people were dying? I I don't know. I'm

00:26:08 sorry to just hit you with this, but do you know off the top of your head like how how frequent were deaths? Uh um there's regular deaths where it's one or two people. One of the biggest mine disasters in the region, I think, is in 1912 and it's the Hastings mine disaster where you have over 130 men, I think, that are killed. Um, so we're not talking about like just every once in a while a man is being injured. It's significantly more than that. Okay. So, we get to September now that we have the the murder down in

00:26:37 Trinidad of the Labor leader. Um, it did the strike come before that because it just said it was after. Okay. So, so now the strike comes. They are now living in tents instead of the company homes, right? And now winter is here. A Colorado winter. Well, before a Colorado winter, you have the governor of the state, Elias Ammons, who knows what's happening in southern Colorado. um and he is um works very closely with um wealthy Denver businessmen and they are very concerned about what's happening um in

00:27:17 the coal fields um because of this strike and they um get pressure from people like Rockefeller to say we need to do something about this. Um and so Governor Elias Ammons will call out the National Guard. the striking minors and their families believe that the National Guard is being called out to protect them. Um it is very clear that that does not happen and a man by the name of um uh General John Chase who has a history of violence against um strikers in um a previous uh um mining strikes in

00:27:51 Colorado. um he gets called out um and he declares well sort of a unofficial martial law um at that lelo tent colony and throughout southern Colorado. Um and so then this puts forces it so that the um strikers in that region are then um being regularly terrorized by National Guards troops um in that region. Um, and this can be a variety of different things from playing loud music um to setting up a machine gun on an armored car and driving it through the so the tent colony is fairly organized but um

00:28:25 and so there's actually roads for people to travel through. Um and so they'll drive that armored car and shoot um at different at different like just random bullets throughout the night. Um, and so that really that terrorization of that tent colony starts as early as October of 1913 and that's before the winter ever occurs. Okay. All right. So, so the National Guard is called out and then provoking the miners is very key to this story. Um, so and like so for me like when whenever I hear National Guard

00:28:58 has been called out on protesters, strikers, American citizens, I always like it scares the crap out of me because I don't believe this and like Lelo does not end well. Um, right. And a lot of it is, and I think that the this horrible thing for me is that these these miners, um, so what I'll miners were asking to be their strike demands include they want to be paid in dollars, not in company script. They want their to be able to go to any doctor that they want to be able to go to. They want to be um to have their own

00:29:33 checkment. All right? They want the enforcement of Colorado mind safety law. So everything that they are striking for is Colorado law. Okay. So they are literally fighting for the rights that should have been guaranteed to them under Colorado law. Um and so I think that they really believed that when Ammons called out the National Guard that it was going to be to protect them. Uhhuh. Okay. And that has not happened. All right. And so this is we're now in October of 1913. Y um and then what what begins to happen

00:30:06 following that? So then you have this winter, right, which is the coldest winter on record. If you look at historical documents from the time, you will see feet and feet of snow. Always seem to happen in history, you know, like whenever a precursor to really bad things happening is this horrible winter, you know, or or a summer with no end. Anyway, continue. No. So, I I think um I think this kind of goes to this idea of how bad were the working conditions that these people are willing to stay in the tent colony. And again,

00:30:38 it's not just men in the tent colony. It is their wives and it is their children. Um in order to make more room for themselves and to be able to have an extra space because everyone like every family is basically assigned to a tent, right? And you're talking in an era really pre-birth control. So you're having a minimum of three to five children, three to five small children, right? And so women are pregnant when they go into the tent colony. Women become pregnant in the tent colony. And so a lot of the men will build an extra

00:31:09 um a tent seller, right? So a hole underneath um these tents to give them additional additional spaces. And so these might be used as rooms. These might be used as storage space. um archaeologists will there's two three act archae archaeological digs but there's two one in between 1998 and 2002 and what they'll find in these tent sellers are um old metal cans that um people had been donated from across the United States um one of the tent sellers is believed to be used as a maternity chamber still so how hang on so so this

00:31:44 is fascinating the tents they dig down to give them pets they build an additional room because they're coal miners so they know how to dig. Yes. Okay. And then they'll put um wood flooring on top of it so that then they don't have to use all the time. So then because they So we're talking about what we talking about highly highly intelligent individuals, people that have a skilled craft even though they're seen as unskilled laborers. But if you're building the scaffolding for the mines and you're having to dig into the

00:32:14 side of a mountain, you know how to dig a hole to make an additional space for your family. And so there's so not every tent has a tent seller, but there are a number of them that do. What's the square footage of a typical tent? And then how much is the extra footage below the earth? Um maybe a 10 by 12 and then underneath um is probably an 8 by10. It depends upon what that space would be used for. There's still a tent seller that exists. There's a tent seller at Lello um that you can go into. I don't

00:32:40 know if you went into it. Well, it's over there right near the uh covered the monument. Yeah. Yeah. Right over there. So, at the base of the monument, there's a metal door which is it's lighter than it used to be. And I think people are always afraid that they can open it or not, but if you open it up, you can walk down the tent, the steps of a tent seller. I'm going to do that in August. Uh because I know what you're talking about, but I never opened it. Um that's interesting. Okay, cool. So, all righty.

00:33:07 Now, we're in this nasty winter. So, it's winter of 1913, 1914, worst winter on record in Colorado history. Gosh. Okay. And so remember the railroad is controlled by the company. Everything's controlled the air they breathe is controlled. So in order to get out you either have to get permission from the national guard who's owned by the company because the the national guard the state auditor his name is Rodie Kenahan after a certain point he says we cannot call state cannot pay for this. And so um they will um do what's called

00:33:40 insurrection bonds. And so those instruction bonds are mainly bought by um Denver businessmen and this is what is paying for um the calling out of those National Guard troops. I'd also I'd also note the National Guard's troops might have been um company guards, but there's also um Baldwin Felts agents that are pulled into the National Guard. And Baldwin Felts agents had already been in southern Colorado in order to kind of um deal with controlling the coal mines. Okay. So, so this is basically uh I mean

00:34:14 I'm kind of twisting it a little bit here. This is almost like having a social credit score. In other words, they're not letting anybody on those trains, right? I mean, it's just you're there. You're stuck. Correct. Or or is it was it was it how feasible how affordable was it to be like, you know what? And again, it's it's very difficult in 2025 to put my mindset into 1914. But let's just say you're so fed up with working conditions, you can't stand the the way that your family is having to live, and you say, "You know

00:34:43 what? I'm going to go find my American dream somewhere else." How difficult was it to afford to get on the train and get the hell out of there? And then even then, where would you go, right? So there's nowhere to go. But I think the other thing is, so there's a story of a woman named Mary Patrusi. and Mary Patrusi um she has a son who's sick um and she tries to get him out of the of um of Lello and they don't allow her to get on the train and the boy ends up dying. There is a beautiful song by the

00:35:13 name by the name of Ton Breeding called the ballot of Mary Patrusi and he he talks about the fact that Mary is not allowed to get on the train to save her six up. Um wow. And then there's other children that will also die um in the tent colony because they're unable they can't go to company doctor because the company's not going to help them, but they can't get out the train out of Trinidad to be able to take their children to the doctor. Okay. And we're not talking about a large distance. Like I said, about 10 to

00:35:36 12 miles, right? That's right. Yeah. Okay. So, um is it time to get to April of 1914 or not? Not quite yet. I'll remind you that they're being I'll remind you that they're being terrorized. Um yeah, there's a woman by the name of Mary Harris or Mother Jones, um who's the United Mine Workers organizer, but she also like goes and organizes all across the United States. Um she's imprisoned in Walsenberg um because of her fighting against um the um the National Guard. Um in protest, you will see um women um

00:36:13 women from across the region who will march through the streets of Trinidad. um the National Guard um comes and tries to disperse the women. Um the order I think it's from General Chase is that they need to ride down the women um and the women get attacked by the National Guard. Um there are stories of women um getting um slashed with bayonets um when um to try to when they're sort of running away to escape it. So like I said, I think the women's part of this is a very um important part because it

00:36:45 it doesn't matter. It's not a fact that it's just striking men is that women are being targeted as well. Um and then you hit April. Um and April is complicated because um a lot of the National Guards forces have been pulled back because they can't um afford them. I would say that in the m in the tent colony there is even though they're from different ethnic groups and different languages um that music becomes very important to the tent colony. a lot of community gatherings. Um on April 19th, it's Greek

00:37:18 Easter. Um so the miners, the strikers all come together and celebrate Greek Easter. Um and that there's a group um they have a baseball game. Yeah, I find this fascinating. The day before the massacre, there is a baseball game where where where laborers and um members of the security uh detail are Yeah. So mass together. Yeah. So some of the National Guardsmen and the miners um are or strikers now at this point are playing together. There is a group of three or four of them um that um disrupt the at

00:37:52 the um National Guard. Um and it's unclear again if they're National Guard and if they are Baldwin Felts agents. So there's a belief that there are specific instigators in this group of National Guardsmen. Yeah. Something pretty ominous, right? Yeah. So they come in, there's a group of three or four men that they kind of stop the baseball game and tell them like, "You've had your fun today. We will have our roast tomorrow." Um, and so people go to bed on Greek Easter, April 19th. Um, they wake up in

00:38:21 the morning. Um, it's unclear exactly like what happens first, but shots are fired. Um, then they're returned. Um and so then there becomes really this allout battle um at the Lebo tent colony um of now the strikers and their families are trying to leave. The National Guard is um attacking the tent colony um by later in the day the National Guard will pour kerosene on the tents and light the tent colony on fire. Now do we know why they chose All right, today's the day, April 20th. Were they were they just tired of the strike? How

00:39:00 long had the strike been going on? So the strike been going on since September with Okay. So I think they're they're tired of it, but it's not clear who had encouraged those specific men to come forward. Right. Um, the other thing that I would say is that um, these National Guardsmen and these policies of National Guardsmen, these were also the Colorado militia that 50 years before at Sand Creek had also attacked Cheyenne and Rapo peoples. Um, and so there is that's another deep dive altogether. Yeah. But

00:39:35 there's a culture that exists y among Colorado militia caller national guard. That's true. of setting fire to encampments. Um, practices of National Guard and of the military in the 1860s and in the 1870s, especially towards native peoples, was one of destroying them in their homes. Um, and and and JD Rockefeller himself, right, he said, so Rockefeller's asked during congressional hearings what he thinks about this, and he says they're willing to die for it. I'm willing to kill them about it. I

00:40:07 think that, um, it's a good principle that I have. Jay Rockefeller is very happy with what he feels like he's been doing. Um they know that the strike is occurring. Um but they're not doing a lot of things to try to quell the violence. Um I will bring up the railroad here though. So one of the things that happens is at some point during the fighting the train will come from Trinidad it will stop on the tracks and by stopping on the tracks that will allow a large number of people of people that have been in the tent colony to

00:40:36 come across and get back up into the mountains and into the Royal. And if you go to the Lelo um uh every year there's a MA memorial at Lello, usually the third weekend in June. Um and the 10 the train will always go by usually sometime between 10:00 and 12:00 and they will blow their horn. Wow. Even even today the train will still go by and blow their horn. And so it's kind of this acknowledgement of the railroad guys know what the history of that region is. They know how important the railroad was

00:41:02 to saving these people. Wow. Because I mean that's that should be next weekend, right? Uh wow. It's It's on the 22nd. Okay. So, um Okay, let me back up for a second. I had a thought that I wanted to ask you about. Um uh Oh my goodness. It'll come back to me, I'm sure. But um Okay. So, so we're now on April 20th and um Oh gosh, man. I bet it was an awesome question, doctor. I'm sure it was the greatest. Well, I'll tell you two really cool I don't think they're horrible stories, right? Yeah. So, there's this

00:41:36 guy named Lewis Tikas. He's a Greek guy, right? Um, first generation immigrant. Um, he is the main organizer. He tries to go to leaders of the National Guard um to stop them from doing this. Um, they end up hitting him in the head with a rifle and shooting him in the back. His body is left along the train tracks for three days. Just his dead body lying there. Um, there's another guy who's trying to help him out. His name is Charlie Costa or Pasqual Costa as well. um gets killed. There's there's

00:42:09 fighting. Um there's shots being fired across this tech colony. This 12-year-old boy, Frank Snyder, um gets shot um gets caught in the gunfire. Um so it's this almost like they're trapped. They're trying to get out. Any attempt to get out, they're just there's no way that they're going to make peace with the National Guard. It's it's it's horrible. Um yeah. How how armed were the miners, by the way? Um they're not poorly armed. Um, so there's questions about how much um, guns that they actually had. Um, they're not anywhere

00:42:38 close to the National Guard. There's no machine gun, right? Anything like that. Um, there's there's a guy in southern Colorado. He still has his grandfather's rifle um, from what had happened. Um, but they're not they're not usually automatic weapon weapons. These would have been like hunting rifles more so. Yeah. Um um so I I think what I think is the saddest part of the story is that um before the tents um are set set a flame um there are uh four women and 11 children that will take refuge in a tent

00:43:12 cellar um and when the and one of the women her name is Satelina Costa she's actually pregnant um at the time the the question is whether she's nine months pregnant or whether she's fullterm pregnant they will seek refuge in these tents. Um when the um National Guard sets the um tents of flame um you end up having um two of these women suffocate and 11 children suffocate. And so this is what will actually bring it to the attention of the national news media. Okay. So that this is what this is what

00:43:45 makes it a massacre, the killing of these women and children. It it feels like Waco. Honestly, it it feels like what happened there. uh as far as women and children uh being burnt alive and uh I remember my question now. So uh it's 1914, we don't have TV, we don't have radio, and I think you just kind of walked into my question with uh you talking about now the news media hears about this. Now the President Wilson hears about this. And that's what I wanted to ask you. is is this fog of war being that it was

00:44:22 before mass communications really. Um, do do you think that, and again, this is speculation, but if this standoff had been happening for 6 months and it was on the news every night, do we think it would have gotten to this point or do you think the fact that it was so remote, again, speculation here, the fact that it was so remote and you didn't see images, you didn't get news in real time, do you think that's why people like Rockefeller felt like they could get away with stuff like this? No, I don't think the media really matters.

00:44:54 I think it still happens today. We see this and look at the news literally look at the news stories that have been on our TV for months. Okay. Right. And then how do and and and maybe but I think people think it's still far away. Right. But I mean I remember years ago there were those Chile 33 Chilean miners that were stuck and I think we were all glued to the TV whether they were going to get out or not and they got out right. Um the next week there was a mine disaster in West Virginia. I think over a hundred

00:45:20 miners were killed. It didn't. It was like a little blurb um in the news. I think maybe one of the issues is the 24-hour news cycle. Definitely, it's almost like some of this gets buried because just we get desensitized from watching it. That's interesting. So, we've gone from no coverage to oversaturation to where stuff gets just lost. That's interesting. We've we've Well, and I think it's about what what do we think matters to us? Um, one of the things with the Lelo massacre is that um, immediately afterwards, um,

00:45:52 because what happens is people, the survivors go and basically share the stories and and it's really the killings of these women and children. Um, and so it spreads throughout southern Colorado and then there's a 10-day war that starts happening so that miners all over will stay start pulling up their arms. That's what I wanted to ask you. What Yeah. What all transpired then? Well, and then the railroad is still running and so you'll have passenger rail that are going through this the the the tent

00:46:18 colony is still burning, right? And then these bodies are laying next to the railroad tracks and and and the people that are traveling on this passenger rail are not lowerass individuals. They're middle and upper class peoples. And so they get to Denver and they news reports start getting to Denver and people's eyewitness accounts of this. And so it's really a lot of um uh progressive women in Denver that really start pushing um people in Washington DC. And so and then Upton Sinclair hears about it in um New York City and he will

00:46:50 start protesting and he will go to the gates of the Rockefeller mansion and demand there to be some level of accountability. Um years later he'll write a book called King Cole. Um, and so I think it's really that 10day war afterwards um that Woodro Wilson will actually call out federal troops to squaltch the violence. And so this this national guard, this federal federal troops, this all becomes a very complicated um situation. Um and then I think the the tent seller is is horrific. Um the the two women that

00:47:24 survive um one is a woman by the name of Mary Patrusi. Um she loses all three of her children. So, this is the same woman whose son had already died from not being able to get on the train. Um, and then most of these children are all under the age of seven or eight. You have a lot of them that are two or three. Um, but she lives, she'll end up, um, going and doing a ton of congressional hearings and speeches across the United States. Um, she comes back to Colorado at some point because she's missing her husband. Um, she and

00:47:51 her husband um, can they have more children and she'll name some of them after the ones that are killed um, in the massacre. Um, and that family continues to tell their story. Um, there's a woman who another woman who lives, her name is Alarita Pedroon. Um, there's very little that is known about her afterwards. We're only now discovering more about um, her descendants. So, I have a conversation with her granddaughters um, next week. Amazing. Um, just really like what was the story at this point? One of the

00:48:18 things that they told me was that um, their grandmother act so their grandmother and their grandfather there was one surviving child who was two years old. He didn't even go into the tent seller. Um but he's he lived the rest of this life with no siblings. Um and they grew up with no cousins or no uncles and no aunts. Um and so they talked about the fact that for the Pedro family um they stayed poor. Um and the mother and the son always wondered how have we stayed poor um when Rockefeller still has all of the money in the world.

00:48:50 Um and then there's a woman who also dies. Her name is um Patria Valdez or Patri and the naming is unclear, but her name on the monument is Patria. Um but she dies. All of her children die. Um we know nothing about um any of her family members. Um her husband um is killed two months later. Um he's looking for a new wife. Um and he gets shot in the front yard of a man's home who doesn't want him dating his daughter. It's it's just I've been looking up stuff on him. Um but then another what the other woman

00:49:20 who dies is um Satelina Costa. um and settle um she was the woman who was pregnant. The family story is that when they um found her body, she had bayonet wounds in her back and she was holding her baby in her arms. Oh my gosh. I will all of her children die and then her husband is also killed. He's one of the men that's killed um when Lewis Tikas is killed. That is a constant refrain um being shot or stabbed in the back on a lot of these massacres in history. Um I I there's the there's the monument there

00:49:53 uh at Lello and uh I I guess my question is the land today. I mean this is it's a ghost town. So this is all privately owned. That's what I wanted to ask you. Who owns this land today? Because I I mean guilty. I hop the fence and I go into these buildings and I take a look around and and I'm just it's it's stunning when you stand in these uh buildings and just to think of what happened there uh a century ago. Yeah. So that land is owned by private land owners. The land around the tent colony on the monument that's owned by the

00:50:26 United Myers. They bought it um a few years later. I think it's 40 acres in all and then they erected the monument in 1918. Um, I will note that the monument was destroyed in around 2003. Um, it was during a steel strike in Colorado in PBLO and it's believed that it was um anti-UN individuals. They cut off the heads of the um the man and the woman and then cut off the arm. It will grit national attention. Um eventually the mine workers um will work with local elected officials and led will be declared a national historic landmark

00:50:59 which happened in 2009. um is one of the only um National Historic Landmarks that the National Park Service has some um uh they are able to apply for grants and they work um collaboratively with the National Park Service, but it's continued to be owned by the mine workers and mine workers um have a memorial event every year and have except for COVID since um 1915. Wow. That's uh Okay. So, so obviously more people are learning about it, I guess. Uh probably through your efforts uh no doubt. Um, all right.

00:51:33 So, how many victims total were there over this 10day period? There's 20 there's 25 on that day. Um, and then the question over the 10day period is there's a couple probably 150, but it's still unclear what the numbers are because they're usually inflated. Okay. But but there's I think there was maybe one or two National Guard um that are killed on the day of. Um, and then those numbers like there's a couple of passerbys that ended up being killed. Um, again it's but it's a multiethnic group, right? You have um Greeks, you

00:52:04 have Italians, you have these um Hispanos or Hispanics that are living in this region. Um, and that is kind of one of the consistent um things about this workforce. It's it's immigrant and it is um people who are ethnic minorities in workforce. Okay. So, a 10-day war happens and what gets it stopped when Wilson sends in the federal troops send in federal troops? Um, the mine workers will clean up as much as they possibly can. They will cement the tent cellar where the women and children died. It's

00:52:35 known as the death pit. That's the tent cellar that still exists there today. And they are still buried in there. No, they are buried in a Trinidad cemetery. Um, most of them are unknown unknown graves. Um, there's no markers to the grave. Um, the unless family members years later um, put the grave markers there. Lewis Tikas is a I think he's in he's he's in the Masonic cemetery so they're not even um buried in the same place. Um but the tent seller there's a Woody Guthrie song called the Lelo Massacre and he sings about the tent

00:53:04 seller being um cemented up. Um the mine workers in 2022 they did a archaeological dig around um the tent seller and restored um the tent cellar to um added some ventilation. The idea is that it will still exist in a hundred years. Um and so they've been amazing stewards um of this property. They they just received a National Park Service grant um about a year ago um to work with um community members to see about long-term preservation and expanded interpretation, which they will probably not get another grant for because that

00:53:38 funding will all potentially have already been cut um in the future. So okay um you had Okay. So you have the strike, you have the massacre, you have the war. Okay. What is the fallout there? I I want to So after the war, they're still on strike. That's what I want I wanted to ask you. Yeah. So they're still on strike. There's they're on So they're on strike until December of 1914 and then the strike will end. So, we always say this as like they don't win the battle, but there is more tension. Go ahead. No,

00:54:16 here's my question. If if I'm a minor there and I'm part of the strike and the massacre happens and the war happens, people they stuck around the Where are they going to go? That that's that's exactly what I said earlier. Yeah. Okay. So they basically like because where are you going to go? Where are you going to go? Right? Because any a lot of any large corporations at this time are going to follow similar practices. You have to have the money to get out. You don't have money to get out unless the mine

00:54:48 workers are going to help you. The mine workers so there there is some migration out but they are going to um Price Utah is a place where a lot of these coal miners end up going because there's another mine in that region. So they're very they're skilled labor in coal mining. Um you will see some people that will end up moving up to Denver. Um some people will move to California, but it's usually um within a couple um one generation. It's not always immediately because they don't have the resources to

00:55:14 go or if they had other family members that had left earlier. So the Costa family, the um extended family had left before the um the massacre um and they had gone up to Walsenberg and then they completely move out to California. Um, but most of them end up staying in the region. Um, and then like your Hispan like my family stays in the region, still in the region because that's where they're from. Um, yeah. But it's really not until after World War II that you'll see this large migration out because

00:55:45 many of them will go to war. Um, and then when they come back, they'll go and work in the steel mill. Um, so and I may have this wrong. Uh, it feels like the first, please correct me if I have this wrong. It feels like the first public relations reclamation project came out of Lello with JD Rockefeller. Yeah. So after the massacre, there are congressional hearings um in which both Rockefeller Jr. and Rockefeller um senior are grilled and then you have survivors who also testify. So it's not like it's just

00:56:19 the Rockefeller family and the mine workers um will pay to bring them out and testify in these congressional hearings. the um mine were the National Guard also gets um put on trial. It ends up in no convictions. Um Rockefeller Jr. will hire this guy Ivy Lee and he'll hire McKenzie King. McKenzie King will later become the prime minister of Canada. Um Ivy Lee is considered to be the father of public relations. Um, and then what he will do is he will work with Ivy Lee and McKenzie King to put together a great PR

00:56:53 campaign which is focusing on this idea of a company. And so CFNI is really one of the very first corporations in the United States that will put together a company. Um, Rockefeller spends millions and millions of dollars put has a whole plan that has a focus on social and industrial betterment. um he will then send it out to corporations and unions throughout the United States and then he goes to southern Colorado to basically proitize his plan. Um he goes and he tells a bunch of the ste because the

00:57:25 CFNI doesn't just control the coal mines that also owns the steel mill. And so he will go to the people at the steel mill and he'll go to the different camps and he will say he has this three-legged stool philosophy. It's like it's it's you and I and all of these other um pieces of the puzzle. The eBay says I'm I'm just like you. I'm a stock owner, right? And so I have invest in those companies in the same way that you do, but I don't have any more power or control than you have. And so being part

00:57:52 of the company union is in your best interests. Um which ultimately with the company still being in control, they picked who their employee representatives were. Um Rockefeller Jr. in 1918 will actually come to the memorial. He'll drive out in the car with one of his friends and with their wives. He gets to the memorial and the United Mine Workers President Frank Hayes meets him at the car and says, "I can't guarantee your safety, so I would suggest that you leave." Um, Rockefeller basically tries to still come forward

00:58:21 and he repeats again and eventually Rockefeller will turn around. So, he really tries to say like, "I get it. I'm trying to make life better for all of you." Um he'll also work with the YMCA um and they will um build different YMCA's throughout the these coal camps in Colorado and that becomes really his push towards social and industrial betterment. You know, and I I wish I had uh uh found a video and rewatched it here uh years ago. I watched this video about the aftermath of Lelo and Rockefeller and how like I mean it was

00:58:56 it was a PR campaign like you said there and and it was um I think I think one of the videos they made it was like it was the first time maybe the only time that they had Rockefeller smiling you know and it was just like look I'm just like you and I am a happy man it's just the stupidest thing but yet it was effective Wasn't it? My gosh. I think it's effective across the nation. In southern Colorado, people see him as he's the villain. Um when he comes um to kind of proitize his work and he comes more than

00:59:30 once. Um but he tries to dance with the women and they refuse because they they know they know who he is and what he did. Um but um a lot of the people that will align themselves with a company um and become company management really see him as being this amazing innovator um and really someone who they see as a champion of working men. Um but that's that's from management perspective. That's not necessarily from work perspective. So is it fair when looking at the history of labor unions in America? Is it fair to draw a line in

01:00:09 1914 and and look at it as the labor movement in America before Lello and the labor movement after? Um I don't usually do that because I think World War II, World War I really complicates things um because you have your um 1917 1918 Alien and Sedition Act. Um and then I think it's about the longevity of unions, right? And so like for me um when you look at like the AFL CIO because you'll see the rise um at this time frame. So I think for the mine workers this really puts them on the national stage. Um I

01:00:46 see it more as the this becomes the roots of what's asked for in 1935 with the passage of the National Labor Relations Board and with the Wagner Act. And so the mine I think because labor unions are so like they're so different sometimes because you'll also see in other places like the industrial workers of the world, right? And you'll see some labor unions that are much more um anti- um immigrant communities whereas the United Mine Workers is not. Um, and so I don't necessarily draw a strong line um,

01:01:21 for all of labor, but I would say for the for the mine workers, it is very clear and um, how it's usually labeled by the the current president Cecil Roberts is this is the mine workers Gettysburg. Um, and this is that fight where they are literally fighting for their constitutional rights. And so this becomes a rallying cry for them. And at least in southeastern Colorado, this is why there's an annual memorial even until today because every everyone comes and gathers, right? And it can be sometimes it's a 50 people. Um during

01:01:53 the 100th commemoration there was over a thousand people. I think in two weeks there'll be probably 150 people. And they are descendants of people that were killed. They are descendants of people that worked in the region. There is still um mine workers from Price, Utah who come from Gallup, New Mexico who come. the Navajo Nation always comes. And so I think that's the marker is that it is clear of if you're not union, what can happen to you? Um and then and then and a lot of it is the conversations

01:02:23 about that why do we have workman's comp? Why do we have eight hour work days? Right. And that much of this is because of the sacrifices that were made at the Lelo massacre. Yeah. And that's that's kind of what I was thinking that that it kind of lined up with with that transition as far as more I guess workers rights. Yeah. That time in I think just World War I complicates things. Um but it's really um but it at least for the mine workers there's a line that's drawn and this become this this is this is sacred land. Um and and

01:02:56 I'm going to be very annoying with this question but it's kind of bugging me here. You mentioned that the third weekend in June is when the train does the whistle thing. So it does it all the time, but you really hear it that third weekend into June because So why is it not April 20th then? Like I'm just trying to figure out what what's the significance. You ever been to Colorado in April? Okay. The only way you're guaranteed that the memorial is going to happen is if it's in June. Okay, I got you. That

01:03:22 makes sense. Now I I was trying to figure out. See, I have to ask these questions because otherwise So it was so and it's and it's changed. So, it used to be closer to Memorial Day when I was on the 100th commission. There was an an event on April 20th, but the mine workers usually do it in June because they're guaranteed it's not going to snow, right? Okay, that makes sense. Because Colorado gets you in April, you you think it's all nice and wonderful and then No, I've lived in western Nebraska. I know what it's like

01:03:51 out there uh in the And it just evolved. It used it used to be earlier in it used to be around Memorial Day and then it was earlier in June. And so this has kind of been that and then anyone who's coming out to speak, they're not going to get stuck in the snow. Yeah, that's cool. Very good. Now, so um and no one fights. So in in 2014, it was actually the third week in May, I think it was. Um Okay. But now it's late in June. So Okay. Um I mean, you have covered this uh topic. How how long have you been researching

01:04:20 this? Because like I said, I stumbled upon this marker and I'm so glad it was there. I didn't find find anything out about this until 2020. So, as a as a professional researcher, I started writing my dissertation in 2005. And I tried I actually tried to not write about Lello. Um my research, I wanted to look at southeastern um Colorado World War II veterans. And so I was living in Texas. I was actually living in love, Texas at the time. and I would make the drive um up to PBLO to do my research um and every time I would

01:04:52 pass by Lovebo and I was so mad when I realized that I couldn't do I couldn't write about World War II unless I wrote about Love um and I didn't and I didn't want to write about Love because I think I felt like at least the history has been written extremely well by a man by the name of Thomas Andrews who wrote a book called Killing for Coal and so I didn't feel like there was a lot of need to do more. um the longer I've researched it now, it's really about the women's stories that I do research on

01:05:18 and about the descendant stories. Um so what's what's the memory um of the massacre um but Lelo was one of my first field trips. My family actually lived in southeastern Colorado. I went to um elementary school at this town called Hony, Colorado. Um I think it was so it's maybe 10 minutes from the massacre site. Um I I don't know if it was because our teacher um really cared about Lelo or if it was um a cheap bust that you had to pay a little bit for gas. Um and um I remember that um when I was writing my dissertation um there was

01:05:51 a family reunion in Trinidad in 2005. Um and we all showed up at my great uncle um Vidal Mononttoya's house and he wasn't there um because he'd gone to Bucko. Wow. Uh-huh. And so that really stuck with me of how important Lello is to this old this older generation in Colorado. Um especially because a lot of the workplace gains that were made for coal miners was because of the massacre. Um and there used to be um there was leello days where the mine workers would bring um people to the memorial site.

01:06:23 They would do um long walks to it. Um so it became really important at least in the history of southeastern Colorado. Um, and you're working on two books. Two books. Okay. Two books, museum exhibits, uh, focus groups, um, figuring out how to continue to tell the story of Lello. Um, so that you would go to the masker site and there'd be more interpret the panels, probably a bigger museum exhibit, and then hopefully a mobile app with a QR code that you could just click that on and open up to a whole um

01:06:53 set of resources everywhere from songs to um documentaries to um resources page and then hopefully link you back to oral histories and to um archaeological artifacts. And you're doing all of this from Virginia, right? Um I go I go west every summer and I have a colleague that I wrote the book with that we once a week. Um and so um Zoom so co was good for um virtual spaces. Um and then as a professor I teach um American West and my students just did a um a class on Lello this past semester. Um it helps me to um really

01:07:32 think about Lello within a broader um US context and I think in southern Colorado every like more people have heard of it. So in this part of the country, it reminds I'm constantly reminded people do not know about this and that the story is just as important as I think that it is. And it's really helped me to connect the the international component of the story um where these people have come from. And so um my colleague and I are doing a lot of work on saying we need to tell the story not just of the

01:07:58 mass of her but of the the generations before and how did we get to Lello but also the generations after and what do those families do with the story of Llo and I think that's been that's been very rewarding um because some family members knew about Lelo so people living today and we found people who um they didn't know um and so they're descendants of people who were killed and they don't know unless they they basically find a breadcrumb at some point like I have a a noble woman. Her her father died and

01:08:26 that's when she realized that her um uncle was killed at the local mass. She and knew nothing about him until after her father died. Wow. Wow. Well, well, thank you for your work on this and for bringing history to life and making sure that this story, no matter how dark it is uh in in America's story, that it does get told. Uh Dr. Fawn Amber Mononttoya, James Madison University, uh the Lello massacre. get out there off of I25 if you can. Just uh if you're driving up to Denver or down from Denver, it's uh it's right there just to

01:09:00 the west of the interstate. I mean, you see it from the interstate and it's it's such a moving experience just to go there and and read the names and everything. So, uh thank you for your time today, doctor. Uh anything else, uh you want to throw out there for us before we part? No, I would check out um the YouTube. It's called the Battle of Mary Patrusi. Um, and then there's a couple Rocky Mountain PBS. Um, there's one called The Logo Experience, and I have a C-SPAN 3, which is a podcast or a video that you can watch on it. Okay.

01:09:30 All right. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it. And, uh, ladies and gentlemen, tomorrow we'll do the Friday live stream right here at 3 p.m. Eastern. Rebecca will be back. Uh, Brad will be here. We'll have some fun. And then a week from today, next week's deep dive, Operation Gladadio. What was the CIA up to after World War II? Okay, kids. Thank you so much. I hope youall have a great day. Hey, be safe out there.