[424]COLLECTING STORIES OF 1927 “SHOOTOUT” MOVES TO FOREFRONT

May 9. 2008

COLLECTING STORIES OF 1927 “SHOOTOUT” MOVES TO FOREFRONT
MTSU researchers to visit South Pittsburg May 18

Contact: Carolyn Millhiser, (423)-837-8327
or John Lynch (615)898-5591

(MURFREESBORO)— In 2005, two MTSU professors made a presentation in South Pittsburg about their research into the 1927 “Christmas Day Shootout.” At the time, a number of people said they had heard stories about the incident that had been passed down through the years.
At 2 p.m., Sunday, May 18, interested citizens are encouraged to come to the Senior Citizen Activity Center, 315 Elm Ave., in South Pittsburg to hear and record family memories and stories about the “Shootout.”
Dr. Barbara Haskew, MTSU professor of economics and director of the Tennessee Center for Labor Management Relations, and Dr. Bob Jones, professor of history, will return to South Pittsburg to facilitate the collection and recording of those stories so that they can become a part of the record for future generations. These recordings will be preserved at the Albert Gore Research Center at Middle Tennessee State University.
For questions or more information, contact Carolyn Millhiser, secretary, South Pittsburg Historic Preservation Society, at (423)-837-8327 or via email at ckmillhiser@charter.net.
Haskew and Jones published their initial research in the winter 2004 “Tennessee Historical Quarterly.” More information about their research and the shootout is available online in the Aug. 29, 2005 edition of MTSU’s “The Record,” www.mtsu.edu/~proffice/Record/Rec_v14/rec1405/rec1405p6.pdf.
A video story about the event is also available online at http://www.mtsu.edu/~proffice/MT_Record/MTR-misc-06-07.html#Shootout.

BACKGROUND
The shootout grew out of a labor-management dispute in the southern stove industry that faced increasingly cut-throat competition. It was a time when workers were trying to organize to gain a voice in their workplace and to ensure a fair wage. At the same time, labor organizations were falling out of favor across the country, with management preferring the open shop and claiming that union or closed shops were incompatible with the American way and the U.S. Constitution.
“The dispute was between the H. Wetter Stove Company in South Pittsburg and its unions—the Iron Molders, Metal Polishers and the Stove Mounters,” Haskew explained.
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“The stove company employed 800 workers in a community of slightly more than 1,200 residents. As the company tried to rid itself of its unions, the dispute spilled over into the broader community. The small town chose up sides and became polarized.”
The conflict extended to law enforcement in South Pittsburg and Marion County, Haskew noted. One visiting reporter observed that, even though other industries and their unions had moved away, there was still a strong and stubborn union spirit that remained in the area—and the Wetter dispute was a kind of last stand for unionism.
Haskew and Jones detail other behind-the-scene intrigues that fed the growing animosity. Bitter political rivalries emerged from local campaigns. There were political favoritism and nepotism and efforts to stack the deck on town councils toward one side or another. There was the hiring of special armed city police purportedly to protect property and preserve order and the recruiting of Wetter security guards. Then there were the strikebreakers, sympathetic to the company—and the organized workers, loyal to the union. The tension grew and finally erupted.
On Christmas Day in 1927, there was a shootout that some said involved as many as 20 men. In fewer than 10 minutes, when the shooting stopped, five men lay dead—the sheriff and his deputy, a city policeman and night marshal, and one of the special police hired by the Wetter Company. A sixth person, South Pittsburg’s police chief, died the next day. The “Christmas Massacre,” as it soon would be coined, claimed six lives.
“The shootout generated regional and brief national news coverage at the time, but after that, it disappeared from the radar screen,” Haskew pointed out. “Bob and I were surprised to find out that no one had fully researched and published an account and analysis of this dispute. We have hypothesized that the town intentionally shut the door on this matter because they were embarrassed about the image reported in the press.
“In undertaking this task,” she continued, “we not only pored through area resources but through documents in the archives of the U.S. Conciliation Service and journals of the unions that we found in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society.”
“In South Pittsburg, the commitment of stove workers to their unions extended over a quarter of a century,” Haskew and Jones state in their article. “These deep roots help to explain the impressive persistence and staying power of the workers. … Looking through this window into the southern stove industry and the town provides scholars with some sense of the passions and forces generated by industrialization and the labor movement in the small town South.”
Family members of those who died in the shootout still live in the area, Haskew noted.
“Bob and I are particularly indebted to Billy and Ida Smith, who first told us about this labor dispute and shootout,” Haskew said. Billy Smith is the grandson of one of the lawmen killed in the shootout, she noted.

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