This was one of several fatal conflicts in the area at the turn of the century that reflected both labor union tension and racial violence.

[1] After the Illinois District of the UMWA settled with almost every operator, the Chicago-Virden Coal Company and a few others abrogated, and recruited African-American miners as strikebreakers.

On September 24, a trainload of potential strikebreaking African-American miners pulled into Virden on the Chicago & Alton Railroad (C&A RR, multiple tracks to the west, right in the photograph).

[2] After twenty minutes of firing on both sides, the train's engineer pulled away from the minehead, keeping the strikebreakers in their cars, and continued northward to Springfield, Illinois.

The next day, October 13, the union abruptly announced it would not protect or care for the African Americans beyond six o’clock that evening.

A mob gathered at the union hall threatening to lynch the strikebreakers but Mayor Loren Wheeler of Springfield calmed them down and arranged to send the Birmingham miners to St Louis on the next train.

[1] A monument in the Virden town square commemorates the coal strike of 1898 and the battle of October 12 that was its bitter end.

Both before and after the events at Virden, Governor John Riley Tanner ordered the state militia to Pana to keep the peace, as the miners tried to unionize the mine.

[2][9] At Lauder (now Cambria, Illinois), a group of African-American miners traveling by train from Pana were attacked by organized strikers on June 30, 1899.

[10] A month after the Virden conflict, an African-American, F. W. Stewart, was lynched at Lacon, Illinois by organized miners for refusing to honor the town of Toluca's new sundown rule.