One hundred years ago this year, thousands of women in Crawford County held a protest.
They were wives, mothers, daughters and sisters of local miners, and they were speaking out against hazardous working conditions, poor pay, and discrimination the miners faced each day.
In December 1921, in a protest that made national news, the women marched to the mine headquarters in Franklin — now the site of the Miners Hall Museum. The event that became known as the Amazon Army March. The spirited act linked men and women together in one of the most dynamic pages in the history of American labor.
This year’s Gene DeGruson Memorial Lecture features local historian Linda Knoll, a longtime local teacher and a Humanities Kansas speaker, in a talk titled “The Amazon Army: The Fight for Workers’ Rights and Social Justice in the Kansas Coalfields.”
The free lecture is Tuesday, Oct. 5, at 7 p.m. in the basement of Axe Library on the Pittsburg State University campus. It is open to the public and will be followed by a reception.
For more information, contact [email protected] or call 620-235-4883.
