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Chiquola Mill Massacre

1930s mass shootings in the United States1930s strikes in the United States1934 in South Carolina1934 labor disputes and strikes1934 mass shootings in the United States
1934 murders in the United StatesAbbeville County, South CarolinaLabor disputes in South CarolinaMass murder in the United States in the 1930sMass shootings in South CarolinaMassacres in 1934Massacres of protesters in the United StatesSeptember 1934 in the United StatesStrikebreakersTextile and clothing labor disputes in the United StatesUnited Textile Workers of AmericaUse American English from November 2021Use mdy dates from November 2021

The Chiquola Mill Massacre, also known locally as Bloody Thursday, was the violent dispersal of a picket line of striking workers outside the Chiquola textile mill in Honea Path, South Carolina. The strike was part of the textile workers' strike of 1934, which mobilized workers up and down the East Coast of the United States in response to the worsening labor conditions during the Great Depression. Violence broke out when Dan Beacham, the mayor and magistrate in Honea Path as well as the superintendent of the mill, ordered an armed posse of strikebreakers to fire into the crowd. As the crowd fled, six strikers were shot in the back and killed, one mortally wounded, and thirty others suffered less than mortal wounds. Beacham obstructed court proceedings against himself and the other strikebreakers, and ordered some of the strikers arrested. Dozens of unionized workers were fired or evicted from their company homes, and after the defeat of the larger strike on September 23, the unionization effort in Honea Path largely came to an end. Until the 1994 publication of "The Uprising of '34" and the subsequent journalistic work of Dan Beacham's grandson, Frank Beacham, the events of the massacre were largely undiscussed in Honea Path. Today, the event is memorialized by a stone marker in nearby Dogwood Park.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Chiquola Mill Massacre (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Chiquola Mill Massacre
Chiquola Avenue,

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N 34.451653 ° E -82.391924 °
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Chiquola Avenue 457
29654
South Carolina, United States
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Due West Female College
Due West Female College

Due West Female College was a private women's college that operated in Due West, South Carolina, US, from 1859 until 1927, when it merged with Erskine College. Due West was founded by a mixed group of lay men and local leaders from the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. Its first president was John Irwin Bonner, who had founded the first ARP Church in the town. Although some of its founders were affiliated with the church, the college did not have an official denominational affiliation until it was bought by the ARP Church in 1904. The college's original mission was to educate women to become teachers in the Greater Abbeville County area. Over time, however, Due West began to attract students from throughout the Southern United States, including from as far away as Texas. The New York Times noted in 1906 that the college and its surrounding town had become known as the most "strait-laced" place in America, with the "damsels" of the Due West Female College being "as well behaved and as proper as members of the faculty." Due West had been closely linked to another college in town, Erskine College, since its founding. When the better-known Erskine became fully coeducational in 1899, Due West experienced a decline in enrollment. In 1925, Due West agreed to merge with Erskine, which helped the coeducational college receive its first accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges. The colleges officially merged in 1927, with Due West closing in 1928.