47-year-old miner Barney Graham, local UMWA president, was assassinated on the main street of the company town of Wilder, Tennessee owned by the Fentress Coal and Coke Co., while leading a strike on April 30, 1933.

‘Hired Thugs Murder Tennessee Mine Union Leader’ by Walker Martin from Challenge of Youth (Y.P.S.L.). Vol. 1 No. 3. June, 1933.

Tennessee Labor Chief Shot in Back While on Mercy Errand.

In the surpassing scenic beauty of north middle Tennessee, working class blood is being spilled by the hired guards of the Fentress Coal and Coke Co. On April 30, Barney Graham, president of the local Miners’ Union, was riddled with bullets as he returned from an errand to get medicine for his wife, who is in bed with pellagra, a disease caused by slow starvation. A series of wage cuts totaling over 50 per cent was climaxed on July 8, 1932, by a walkout.

After nearly a year of strike, the peaceful resistance of the workers is being strained to the breaking point by the ruthless tactics of the company, whose weapons have varied from evictions and starvation to this brutal murder of the strikers’ leader.

Company’s Strike-Breakers Fail.

The company failed to break the strike after the state spent $22,000 to keep troops in the area. When they were removed, imported gunmen filled the vacancy.

There was no food in the Graham home when the murdered body of the father was brought there. There were no lights, and windowpanes were missing. There were not even sheets or pillowcases for the beds. One cannot look at the frail, warped, stunted bodies of Barney’s starving children without being haunted many nights by the picture of their living death.

Twelve-year-old Della Mal can’t go to school because she has “to stay home with mama,” who is chronically ill.

Daughter Fills Vacancy.

Barney Graham was scheduled to be a delegate to the Continental Congress for Economic Reconstruction held at Washington May 6 and 7, but instead of attending he lay buried on Wilder mountain. His young daughter, Della Mai, filled the vacancy. Here is her own account of the murder of her father.

“Big chief come and give mama a house notice. Daddy was not at home. Mama was sick and he was gone to get her some medicine. Mama told big chief to leave.

Company Threatens Killing.

“The next time he come he took out our lights and said he was aimin’ to take out the doors and windows. Daddy was president of the union, and a man said the company was aimin’ to have him killed. “I told daddy he better get him a gun so he could carry it with him when he went to get mama medicine and went to meetings. He just laughed and told me not to worry, that nobody would hurt him. But I told daddy I saw some men with big guns at the store, and they looked mean.

“Last Sunday evening daddy started to get mama some more medicine. Nearly everybody went to church. I had to stay with mama. I heard a whole lot of guns shoot, and just in a few minutes a man come and told me that daddy was killed.

Victim Shot in Back.

“Uncle Arthur is a scab, and he told me daddy’s ribs stuck in front when he was shot the first time. Nobody weren’t there but the men that killed him, when he was first shot. When Uncle Arthur heard the shot he run to see. When daddy fell in the road he raised up on his elbow and they shot him again a whole lot more times in the back. Then he fell again and they shot him while he was lying down in the road. They hit him on the head with their guns and broke the handles off of them. They wouldn’t let anybody get daddy-guarded him with machine guns. They was afraid he would come back alive.

“They said there was a few more they wanted to get; Arkley Bilbrey and Jim Crownover is two of them.

Large Funeral Crowd.

“The crowd was so big they nearly smothered me at daddy’s funeral; and everything was so quiet! They marched around where daddy was killed, and blood was still in the road. When we went back home Buddy (Byron, Jr.) said daddy weren’t killed; that he had just gone to get mamma some medicine and hadn’t come back.

“The union men said they sure would fix daddy’s grave up if they ever got a contract. Daddy wanted me to go to a labor school.

“They buried daddy ‘way up on the mountain at Wilder. I feel just like supen else is gonna happen.” (Signed) DELLA MAE GRAHAM. Wilder, Tenn.

Challenge of Youth was the newspaper of the Young People’s Socialist League. The paper’s editorial history is as complicated as its parent organization’s. Published monthly in New York beginning in 1933 as ‘Challenge’ associated with the Socialist Party’s Militant group (the center/left of the party around Norman Thomas). Throughout the 30s it was under the control of the various factions of the YPSL. It changed its name to Challenge of Youth in 1935 and became an organ of Fourth Internationalists, leaving to become to the youth paper of the Socialist Workers Party in 1938. In the split of 1940, the paper like the majority of YPSL went with the state capitalists/bureaucratic collectivists to become the youth paper of the Workers Party.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/challenge-of-youth/330600-challengeofyouth-v01n03.pdf