1913 Massacre on AllMovie

Folk troubadour Woody Guthrie immortalized the heartbreaking events of Christmas Eve, 1913 in his downbeat ballad "1913 Massacre". That evening, in Calumet, Michigan, a group of underpaid miners were having their annual Christmas ball with their families, when the thuggish union bosses who were lingering outside decided to play a joke by screaming "fire." In terror, dozens of celebrators rushed down the stairwell and attempted to escape from the building to avoid perishing in flame, but the union bosses held the door tightly shut. The crowd on the stairs quickly swelled to such frantic proportions that at least 73 children and many others were killed from suffocation. With the documentary 1913 Massacre, co-directors Louis Galdieri and Ken Ross incorporate a combination of archival footage and interviews to tell this sad story. Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie (Woody's son) are among the interviewees.