Music: Mine Minstrels

In some of the mine patches of northeastern Pennsylvania June 21, 1877 is still remembered as Black Thursday. That was the day the Molly Maguires—ten of them—were hanged. Far from sissies, the Molly Maguires were a gang of Irish plug-uglies who for two decades had terrorized miners' families, taken pot shots at bosses, and made things generally hot for law-abiding mine folks. "Mollies" had been as much of a nuisance to the coal fields' feeble labor organizations as to the mine owners. When they were finally dispersed with the aid of Pinkerton detectives...