On July 18, 1917, IWW organizer Frank Little arrived in Butte, Montana, to support copper miners striking after the June 8 Speculator Mine disaster, in which 168 workers died. Despite a broken ankle, a double hernia, and severe pain from earlier beatings, Little organized picket lines, urged women and other trades to join the strike, and denounced American participation in World War I by calling soldiers overseas “Uncle Sam’s scabs in uniform.” His speeches enraged mining interests, local authorities, and a hostile press at a moment when wartime anti-radicalism was reaching fever pitch. In the early morning of August 1, six masked men entered the Steel Block boardinghouse where he was staying. After initially kicking in the wrong door and claiming to be law officers, they found Little, beat him, and dragged him away in his underwear. He was reportedly tied to the rear bumper of a car and hauled across Butte’s granite streets before being taken to Milwaukee Bridge and hanged from a railroad trestle. The coroner recorded asphyxiation and a severe blow to the back of the skull. A note pinned to his body read “First and last warning,” included the vigilante symbol “3-7-77,” and listed the initials of other labor figures. No one was ever arrested or prosecuted. An estimated 10,000 workers joined his funeral procession, followed by another 3,500 mourners, making it the largest funeral in Butte’s history and turning Little into a martyr of the American labor movement.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1910s
The 1917 Butte Lynching of Labor Agitator Frank Little
Frank Little / 1910s
On July 18, 1917, IWW organizer Frank Little arrived in Butte, Montana, to support copper miners striking after the June 8 Speculator Mine disaster, in which 168 workers died. Despite a broken ankle, a double hernia, and severe pain from earlier beatings, Little organized picket lines, urged women and other trades to join the strike, and denounced American participation in World War I by calling soldiers overseas “Uncle Sam’s scabs in uniform.” His speeches enraged mining interests, local authorities, and a hostile press at a moment when wartime anti-radicalism was reaching fever pitch. In the early morning of August 1, six masked men entered the Steel Block boardinghouse where he was staying. After initially kicking in the wrong door and claiming to be law officers, they found Little, beat him, and dragged him away in his underwear. He was reportedly tied to the rear bumper of a car and hauled across Butte’s granite streets before being taken to Milwaukee Bridge and hanged from a railroad trestle. The coroner recorded asphyxiation and a severe blow to the back of the skull. A note pinned to his body read “First and last warning,” included the vigilante symbol “3-7-77,” and listed the initials of other labor figures. No one was ever arrested or prosecuted. An estimated 10,000 workers joined his funeral procession, followed by another 3,500 mourners, making it the largest funeral in Butte’s history and turning Little into a martyr of the American labor movement.
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