July 17, 1914

In the most violent day of what came to be known as the Sebastian County Union War of 1914, approximately 200 union members and their sympathizers battled with company guards at the site of Mine No. 4, killing two of Franklin Bache’s workers and nearly destroying the mine. Over the next few days, several other area mines were dynamited. The Sebastian County Union War of 1914 is one of the major instances of labor contention and violence in Arkansas. Growing out of a mining operator’s attempt to save his badly run company by eliminating union labor, it resulted in murder, property destruction, and a lawsuit that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.