Italian-born Emma Cumerlato, in a family striking with the Progressive Miners of America against Peabody Coal, murdered by gun thugs on January 3, 1933.

‘Thugs Battle Strikers, Miners’ Wife is Murdered’ from Challenge of Youth (Y.P.S.L.). Vol. 1 No. 1. April. 1933.

Fifty-two Strikers, No Thugs, Held for Various Charges in Kincaid Gun Battle.

(Special to The Challenge.) TAYLORVILLE, Ill. Mrs. Emma Cumerlatto, wife of one of the striking Progressive Miners, was murdered in the doorway of her home as she was watching an exchange of gunfire between Peabody Co. thugs and the miners in front of Mine No. 7, near Kincaid. Altho Mrs. Cumerlatto was standing in back of the striking miners when she was shot, 52 of the miners were arrested for her death. Among them is her husband.

The thugs suffered one major casualty in the cross-fire.

The following is the story as told by one of the eye witnesses.

About 5:30 p.m. on Jan 3, about 200 scabs left Peabody Coal Co. mine No. 7 near Kincaid. Most of these men had been given special commissions as deputy sheriffs at the company’s request, and all were heavily armed. Upon reaching the highway they assaulted a group of pickets, members of the Progressive Miners of America who were being guarded from violence by a detail of special police sent there by the Kincaid mayor.

Houses Bombed.

In the cross-fire that followed one of the thugs and Mrs. Emma Cumerlatto, who was standing in the doorway of her home at the rear of the picket line and in the line of fire of the strike-breaking deputies, were killed. During the night several Progressive homes and stores were bombed and streets of Kincaid and other villages were patrolled by scabs who fired into miners’ homes.

Next morning three deputy sheriffs set out from the No. 7 mine heavily armed and with lowered windows on their car. These three, Fulton Smith, Harry Hilmers, top foreman at the mine, and James “Guy” Hickman, a Peabody strike breaker, were recently imported from West Virginia.

A few moments before this car started out the streets had been patrolled by officers of the National Guard who will testify that all was quiet. On the way to the business center of Kincaid the thugs fired into residences and filling stations. They then passed the Progressives’ soup kitchen, where several miners were guarding relief provisions, and shot out several of the windows. At this point the fire was returned by special police who had been assigned to guard the relief station.

52 Miners Indicted.

The thugs returned to the mine, Hickman having been wounded in the head and Smith in the shoulder. When asked who had shot Hickman, Smith and Hilmers replied in the presence of witnesses that they did not know.

Later at the grand jury hearing they said that they had been fired at by Dupire and Albert Mattozzo, Kincaid police chief from in front of the Tex Hardware store a half block beyond the soup kitchen. Although dozens of witnesses are ready to testify that Mattozzo was home at the time and that Dupire was in Gillespie over 50 miles away, the two were indicted for first degree murder. It also indicted 52 other Progressive miners and sympathizers for the murder of Emma Cumerlatto and the thugs and on other minor charges.

Workers vs. Peabody.

Not one of the deputy sheriffs or Peabody scabs was indicted. Mattozzo and Dupire went on trial in the Christian county court at Taylorville March 27 and the other 52 defendants will be called later. Class-Conscious workers throughout the entire state are convinced that this case is not the case of “The People” vs. Dupire and Mattozzo, but that of the Peabody Coal Co. vs. the “Workers of the State of Illinois.”

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/330400-challengeofyouth-v01n01.pdf