1920 Alabama coal strike

[6][8] Popular opinion in Alabama was turned against the strikers almost immediately, particularly the disapproving black middle class, who saw racial solidarity and cooperation with capitalists as their only route to economic self-defense.

Oscar W. Adams Sr., editor of the Birmingham Reporter, spoke to workers in company-owned halls, imploring them to remain loyal to mine owners.

[citation needed] The strike's first major confrontation happened on September 16, in Patton Junction, Alabama (in Walker County), where strikers killed the general manager of the Corona Coal Company, Leon Adler, along with Earl Edgil, a deputy sheriff.

[11] But African Americans bore the brunt of the violence: among many such threatening incidents, black miner Henry Junius was found in a shallow grave outside of Roebuck a few weeks into the strike.

[12] Also in December, state troopers terrorized the small black business district in Pratt City with random machine gun fire.

Part of Kilby's March 9 decision read: It is rather difficult to understand how such a large number of men could be induced so deliberately to disregard such an obligation of honor.

On January 5, nine guardsmen of Company M entered the jail, subdued the sheriff on duty, lynched Baird, and riddled his body with bullets.