Fannie Sellins

Fannie Sellins (1872 – August 26, 1919) was an American union organizer.

Born Fanny Mooney in New Orleans, Louisiana, she married Charles Sellins in St. Louis, Missouri. After his death she worked in a garment factory to support her four children. She helped to organize Local # 67 of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in St. Louis, where she became a negotiator for 400 women locked out of a garment factory. Thus she came to the attention of Van Bittner, president of District 5 of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA).

In 1913 she moved to begin work for the mine workers union in West Virginia. Her work, she wrote, was to distribute "clothing and food to starving women and babies, to assist poverty stricken mothers and bring children into the world, and to minister to the sick and close the eyes of the dying." She was arrested once in Colliers, West Virginia for defying an anti-union injunction. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson intervened for her release.

Philip Murray hired Sellins onto the staff of the UMWA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1919 she was assigned to the Allegheny River Valley district to direct picketing by striking miners at Allegheny Coal and Coke Company. On August 26 she witnessed guards beating Joseph Starzelski, a picketing miner, and when she intervened, she was shot and killed by two bullets.

She was buried from St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church in New Kensington, Pennsylvania on August 29 and interred at Union Cemetery in Arnold. A coroner's jury and a trial in 1923 ended in acquittal for the two men accused of her murder.

References

* James Cassedy, “A Bond of Sympathy: The Life and Tragic Death of Fannie Sellins.” "Labor's Heritage" (4, 4 Winter 1992): 34-47.

External links

* [http://www.explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=797 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Historical Marker]
* [http://www.library.pitt.edu/labor_legacy/Sellins.html Labor Legacy website at the University of Pittsburgh] ]