The Carterville Mine Riot was part of the turn-of-the-century Illinois coal wars in the United States.
The national United Mine Workers of America coal strike of 1897 was officially settled for Illinois District 12 in January 1898, with the vast majority of operators accepting the union terms: thirty-six to forty cents per ton (depending on the county), an 8-hour day, and union recognition.
A Chicago newspaper narrated “Toluca is a mining town on the Santa Fe Road, a place of recent rapid growth, with a mixed population of turbulent disposition.
In Carterville, Illinois 60 miles north of Cairo, at the southern tip of the state, mine owner Samuel Brush imported African-American strikebreakers from Sweetwater, Tennessee.
In March 1899, Brush unilaterally instituted an 8-hour day and raised the tonnage rate 1.5 cents above union scale for his non-union employees, but would not recognize the UMWA.
On June 30, the train from Pana, carrying Brush, the strikebreakers, and guards, stopped at Lauder (near Carterville).
On September 17, a party of 13 African-Americans, some armed, tried to walk from the mine to the Carterville train station on personal business.
When the survivors made it back to the African-American community, nearly 200 blacks stormed the mine’s storehouse, where there were guns, but Brush’s son prevented them from arming themselves.
[11] Production at the mine continued with the strikebreakers working until 1906, when Samuel Brush sold out to the Madison Coal Company.
[12] Carterville, in this chapter of the Illinois Coal Wars, had a very different racial legacy, when compared to Virden and Pana.
Alternative research has re-analyzed black strikebreaking as a racial survival strategy designed to deal with the dominant society,[13][14] rather than as a breach of class solidarity at a critical point during a strike.