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Web Extra: Remembering the Marion Massacre

In the following multimedia companion pieces to this week’s cover story, “Mountain Shame,” we offer a narrated slide show of images culled from a newly unveiled scrapbook that documents the violent 1929 labor strikes in Marion, N.C. We’ve also posted the audio documentary, Strike, which examines the demonstrations and there effects on the rural mountain town.

Slide show produced by Jake Frankel
Scrapbook imagery courtesy of the family of Arthur M. DeBruhl
Photos by Jonathan Welch

The audio documentary Strike first aired on WNCW-FM in 2005 as a five-part series. It is made available here by permission of WNCW and Isothermal Community College:

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About Jake Frankel

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8 thoughts on “Web Extra: Remembering the Marion Massacre”

  5. The Wisconsin government employee union situation is much different than this long-ago situation. Yet it seems like MX ran this story in sympathy of the government employee unions along the sae lines as MoveOn.Org has expressed support. Apples and oranges.

    I’m curious. Is Mountain Xpress a closedunion shop where unions dues are automatically deducted whther you belong or not? DoesMX pay a living wage with benefits? Just wondering.

  6. Thank you for this story. We need to get stories like this out their if only to remind people why we started unions in this country in the first place. Do you really believe the middle class would have been created with out Unions? It doesn’t matter if over the years you belonged to a union or not. Unions have effected us all with better wages, better safer working conditions ect. As the gap between rich and poor becomes wider Unions may be the only way back to what made this country great a large middle class with buying power to keep things humming along.

  7. [i]The Wisconsin government employee union situation is much different than this long-ago situation.[/i]

    Is it? How can you be so sure? I believe the exact same arguments were made against worker’s rights then and now. Bad for business, creeping socialism, etc.

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