Anna LoPizzo
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Anna LoPizzo was an Italian immigrant striker killed during the Lawrence Textile Strike (also known as the
Bread and Roses "Bread and Roses" is a political slogan associated with women's suffrage and the labor movement, as well as an associated poem and song. It originated in a speech given by American women's suffrage activist Helen Todd; a line in that speech ab ...
Strike), considered one of the most significant struggles in U.S. labor history. Anna LoPizzo's death was significant to both sides in the struggle. Wrote Bruce Watson in his epic ''Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream'', "If America had a Tomb of the Unknown Immigrant paying tribute to the millions of immigrants known only to God and distant cousins compiling family trees, Anna LoPizzo would be a prime candidate to lie in it."


Life

LoPizzo, born in
Buccheri Buccheri is a town and ''comune'' in the Province of Syracuse, Sicily (southern Italy). It is one of I Borghi più belli d'Italia () is a non-profit private association of small Italian towns of strong historical and artistic interest, that ...
(Italy SR) 26 November 1878 (Documentation validate) maybe changed her name in Anna LaMonica, lived on Common Street in Lawrence, Massachusetts.Radicals of the Worst Sort: Laboring Women in Lawrence Massachusetts, 1860-1912, Ardis Cameron, 1995, page 106, University of Illinois Press, .


Death

On January 29, 1912, officer Oscar Benoit fired on a group of striking workers, hitting and killing LoPizzo.The I.W.W.: Its First Seventy Years, Fred W. Thompson & Patrick Murfin, 1976, page 56. This was affirmed by nineteen witnesses. In the book ''Roughneck'', Peter Carlson writes that
"At the barricades, pickets and police began to push and shove each other. The police advanced, packing the retreating marchers so tight that they could no longer move, and then began clubbing. Some strikers fought back. A policeman received a stab wound. A police sergeant ordered his men to draw their weapons and fire."
The IWW offered its own account a year after the strike, based upon trial proceedings:
" nJanuary 29, a striker, Annie LoPizzo, was killed on the corner of Union and Garden Streets, during police and military interference with lawful picketing. She was shot by a bullet said to have been fired by Police Officer Oscar Benoit, though Benoit and Police Officer Marshall claim it was fired from behind Benoit by a personal enemy of the latter, following an altercation."The Trial of a New Society, Being a Review of The Celebrated Ettor-Giovannitti-Caruso Case, Beginning with the Lawrence Textile Strike that caused it and including the general strike that grew out of it, CHAPTER III. THE INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY OVERCOMES ALL OPPOSITION, April 1913, Published by I.W.W. PUBLISHING BUREAU, From http://www.workerseducation.org/crutch/pamphlets/ebert_trial/chapter3.html Retrieved February 20, 2007.


The charges and the trial

The death of Anna LoPizzo was used by the authorities during the Lawrence Strike as a means of disrupting and pressuring the union.
Joseph Ettor Joseph James "Smiling Joe" Ettor (1885–1948) was an Italian-American trade union organizer who, in the middle-1910s, was one of the leading public faces of the Industrial Workers of the World. Ettor is best remembered as a defendant in a contr ...
and
Arturo Giovannitti Arturo M. Giovannitti (; January 7, 1884 – December 31, 1959) was an Italian-American union leader, socialist political activist, and poet. He is best remembered as one of the principal organizers of the 1912 Lawrence textile strike and as a de ...
, both IWW organizers, were arrested for the murder although they were two miles away at the time of her death. Police claimed that they had been "inciting and procuring the commission of the crime in ursuitof an unlawful conspiracy", thus making them "accessories before the fact". The two men were imprisoned without bail until trial. A third man, Joseph Caruso, was later arrested for the murder. However,
"Three witnesses—his landlord, his child's god-father and his wife—helped Caruso to establish a complete alibi; he was at home eating supper when Annie Lo Pizzo was alleged to have been shot by him... Caruso said he was not a member of the I.W.W., but would join as soon as he got out f the jail"The Trial of a New Society, Being a Review of The Celebrated Ettor-Giovannitti-Caruso Case, Beginning with the Lawrence Textile Strike that caused it and including the general strike that grew out of it, CHAPTER V, THE INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHS IN COURT, April 1913, Published by I.W.W. PUBLISHING BUREAU, From http://www.workerseducation.org/crutch/pamphlets/ebert_trial/chapter5.html Retrieved February 20, 2007.
Bill Haywood William Dudley Haywood (February 4, 1869 – May 18, 1928), nicknamed "Big Bill", was an American labor organizer and founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and a member of the executive committee of the Socia ...
returned to Lawrence to take control of the strike effort. The trial of Caruso, Ettor and Giovannitti was held on September 30, keeping the two organizers out of action for eight months. At trial, Ettor and Giovannitti were locked in metal cages. The district attorney referred to them as "social vultures" and "labor buzzards". Yet they were not accused of the murder for which they were arrested. All three were acquitted.


Significance of Anna LoPizzo's death

Anna LoPizzo's death on the picket line gave authorities a chance to remove the two main organizers from action for the duration of the strike, but it also became a rallying cry for the workers to demand justice. A few days after LoPizzo's death, "a group of enraged Italian women happened upon a lone police officer on an icy bridge. After stripping him of his gun, club and badge, they sliced the officer's suspenders and took off his pants--a humiliation technique popular with the disorderly women of Lawrence--and dangled the officer over the freezing river". In another protest following LoPizzo's death, "a 22-year-old Syrian immigrant named Annie Kiami stepped in front of the crowd," called the police "Cossacks," and "wrapped an American flag around her body and dared them to shoot holes in t. The protesting women quickly gained a reputation as radicals. The Lawrence strike was ultimately successful because the workers stayed united in their demands. Business writers began to question employers' and the local authorities' tactics relating not only to the strike, but specifically relating to the handling of Anna LoPizzo's death. One writer concerned about the success of the IWW's organizing tactics was Arno Dosch, who wrote in the magazine ''The
World's Work ''The World's Work'' (1900–1932) was a monthly magazine that covered national affairs from a pro-business point of view. It was produced by the publishing house Doubleday, Page and Company, which provided the first editor, Walter Hines Page. ...
'',
"The efforts that have been made by employers and by governmental authorities to repress the movement have been worse than useless. Every move that has been made against the I. W. W. has had the effect of winning sympathy... The trial of the three agitators, Mr. Ettor, Mr. Giovannitti, and Mr. Caruso, for the murder of a woman whose death was indirectly due to the strike, was a tactical error. Mr. Ettor won the support of millions of people when he said, " I have been tried here not for my acts, but for my views."
Before the Lawrence Strike and the trial for the death of Anna LoPizzo, many businessmen categorically refused to recognize any unions. After the strike, the
American Federation of Labor The American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L.) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States that continues today as the AFL-CIO. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions eager to provide mutual ...
was courted by some employers, if only as a bulwark against the radical and militant
Industrial Workers of the World The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), whose members are nicknamed "Wobblies", is an international labor union founded in Chicago, United States in 1905. The nickname's origin is uncertain. Its ideology combines general unionism with indu ...
. The foreboding on the part of employers resulted from their fears about what this new labor organization, the IWW, actually represented. Thompson quoted
Harry Fosdick Harry Emerson Fosdick (May 24, 1878 – October 5, 1969) was an American pastor. Fosdick became a central figure in the fundamentalist–modernist controversy within American Protestantism in the 1920s and 1930s and was one of the most prominent ...
in the June issue of ''Outlook'' in 1912 as saying "Wages have been raised, work has been resumed, the militia has gone, and the whirring looms suggest industrial peace; but behind all this the most revolutionary organization in the history of American industry is building up an army of volunteers. The I.W.W. leaves behind as hopelessly passé, the methods of the American Federation of Labor. Some believed that the success of the strikers called for other measures. Fosdick quoted a Boston lawyer who stated, "The strike should have been stopped in the first twenty-four hours. The militia should have been instructed to shoot. That is the way Napoleon did it".


Commemoration

In 2000 a headstone was finally placed at LoPizzo's grave. It was carved with the Bread and Roses symbol of grain stalks and a rose. After being displayed at Lawrence Heritage State Park as part of the annual Bread and Roses festival, it was placed on her grave on September 14.News item from ''Work in Progress'': http://unionyes.htmlplanet.com/newfile.html Retrieved February 20, 2007.


Notes


See also

*
Anti-union violence Anti-union violence is physical force intended to harm union officials, union organizers, union members, union sympathizers, or their families. It is most commonly used either during union organizing efforts, or during strikes. The aim most ofte ...
* Lawrence Textile Strike *
Industrial Workers of the World The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), whose members are nicknamed "Wobblies", is an international labor union founded in Chicago, United States in 1905. The nickname's origin is uncertain. Its ideology combines general unionism with indu ...
*
Big Bill Haywood William Dudley Haywood (February 4, 1869 – May 18, 1928), nicknamed "Big Bill", was an American labor organizer and founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and a member of the executive committee of the Socia ...
*
Bread and Roses "Bread and Roses" is a political slogan associated with women's suffrage and the labor movement, as well as an associated poem and song. It originated in a speech given by American women's suffrage activist Helen Todd; a line in that speech ab ...
*
Murder of workers in labor disputes in the United States The list of worker deaths in United States labor disputes captures known incidents of fatal labor-related violence in U.S. labor history, which began in the colonial era with the earliest worker demands around 1636 for better working conditions. ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:LoPizzo, Anna People from Lawrence, Massachusetts Industrial Workers of the World members American people of Italian descent Protest-related deaths 1912 deaths Textile workers Year of birth missing Trade unionists from Massachusetts