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Tragedy · Chapter 14, 1934

The Honea Path Massacre

Six dead at the Chiquola Mill gate in about three minutes; a seventh died later.

Armed strikebreakers at the Chiquola Mill in Honea Path on September 6, 1934, the day seven strikers were shot dead at the mill gate.
Armed strikebreakers at the Chiquola Mill in Honea Path on September 6, 1934, the day seven strikers were shot dead at the mill gate.Unidentified photographer, armed men at the Chiquola Mill, Honea Path, South Carolina, September 6, 1934. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

On the morning of September 6, 1934, picketers, some of them from a flying squadron, gathered at the Chiquola Mill in Honea Path, South Carolina. Dan Beacham—the mill's superintendent, who was also the town's mayor and magistrate—had deputized mill loyalists as special officers (his grandson, the journalist Frank Beacham, puts the number at 126), and a machine gun had been mounted on the mill roof. A scuffle broke out and the deputies opened fire. The shooting lasted about three minutes; six strikers died that day, most shot in the back, and a seventh, C. R. Rucker, died of his wounds later. Roughly ten thousand people attended the funeral on September 8. Eleven men were charged and tried, and all were acquitted. For decades the killings were rarely discussed in town. The Chiquola Mill ran until 2003, and in 1995 a granite memorial bearing the names of the dead was dedicated in Honea Path, sixty-one years after the killings.

Sources

  1. ScholarshipHonea Path. South Carolina Encyclopedia.
  2. ScholarshipMassacre at Honea Path. Facing South (Institute for Southern Studies), 1989.
  3. ScholarshipJournalist's book explores family's role in S.C. mill violence. USA Today, 2013.
  4. Archive / museumHonea Path and the End of Summer. University of South Carolina, Moving Image Research Collections, 2012.

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