Violence broke out when Dan Beacham, the mayor and magistrate in Honea Path as well as the superintendent of the mill, ordered an armed posse of strikebreakers to fire into the crowd.
The Chiquola Mill was opened by James David Hammett in 1903, originally for the production of coarse cotton sheeting.
[10] But over the next decade, the population was swelled by mill hands drawn from the ranks of upstate South Carolina's small farmers, who had been pressured off their farms by tightened credit.
All mill workers rented their homes from the company, making them vulnerable to eviction for workplace infractions.
The election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the American presidency in 1932 caused a sea change in Southern mills.
The resultant Code of Fair Competition for the Cotton Textile Industry had some benefits for the workers, such as guaranteeing the right to join a union.
[17][18][19] National leaders of the UTW were reluctant, but the new Southern members began pushing for a strike when it became clear that the NRA code was not going to produce the hoped for improvements in working conditions.
[1] Therefore, when Governor Ibra Blackwood mobilized the National Guard and State Highway Patrol against the strikers, he denied Dan Beacham's request for support in Honea Path.
Around lunchtime, a group of non-union workers attempted to enter the mill but were blocked by the picket line.
[5][2] One, Claude Cannon, had to be shot five times (including when he was already on his hands and knees) before he finally succumbed to the bullets.
[3] Honea Path's churches, who were subsidized by the mill owners, refused to allow a funeral for the slain workers to be held on their grounds.
[6][21] At the inquest summoned by the coroner, eleven strikebreakers were charged with murder, but as the local magistrate Beacham ensured they were acquitted.
The main economic crisis that was affecting the textile industry was overproduction, making a strike ineffective in the short term.
Public screenings of the film spurred conversations in Honea Path that led to the dedication of a small stone marker for the fallen workers in nearby Dogwood Park.