Speak

As the regime tries to tighten control and silence its critics, it becomes more important than ever to exercise our First Amendment rights to free speech and peaceful assembly. One hundred and eleven years ago, a federal judge apparently worked in concert with coal companies to unsuccessfully silence a labor organizer.

Fannie Sellins defied an injunction entered by West Virginia U.S. District Judge Alston Dayton. For exercising her free speech and right to assembly, she was sentenced to six months in jail.

Fannie’s labor organization efforts did not start with coal miners. After her husband died, she went to work in a St. Louis, Missouri garment factory. Conditions were harsh: workers had to arrive by 7:15 a.m., before the doors would be locked. The workers were allowed an hour off at noon, and an hour off between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m., “and then the whole crowd, children of 10 and 11 and old women with the rest, worked until 9. The kids made $1 or so a week, and no one more than $6.” After Fannie and her co-worker Catherine Hurley organized a union, they were able to enforce the nine-hour workday. But they could not get better wages for the children. When the factory locked the union members out, Fannie and Catherine went on the road to tell their story.

Their campaign worked, and Fannie turned her attention to coal miners. Her activity in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania was not received well by local employers. And the employers allegedly had a federal judge on their side, who entered an injunction against striking. A pro-labor publication described Judge Dayton’s “personally made laws” as including “enjoin[ing] the workers from assembling on company property, even though their homes [were] on company property;” preventing relief from being delivered to striking miners and their families; and ruling that strikers had no right to belong to a union and that membership was evidence of a conspiracy.

That didn’t stop Fannie, who continued to rally the workers and aid their families. In 1914, Judge Dayton sentenced her to six months in jail. Workers and Fannie later testified before Congress, accusing the judge of bias toward the coal companies, and a conflict interest because he owned stock in a coal company.

Being jailed did not stop Fannie. The coal companies recruited Black workers from the South to cross the picket line; Fannie boarded the train and convinced many of the workers to join the union’s cause.

On 26 August 1919, Fannie was assassinated “in a battle between special deputy sheriffs and striking coal miners near the mouth of the Allegheny Coal and Coke Company’s mine at Brackenridge, Pennsylvania.” Witnesses said she was killed while protecting children. The sheriff later claimed that her body was “deliberately mutilated to make it appear she was shot in the back.” But Fannie’s 28 August 1919 death certificate reports her cause of death as “shock and hemorrhage following gun shot would in left temple. Prob murder.”

 Frances “Fannie” (Mooney) Sellins was born in Ohio to Richard Mooney and Anna Mahoney; by 1880, the family of eight had moved to Missouri. Fannie likely married before 1900, but within ten years, she was widowed and worked in a garment factory. That is the work that launched her labor organizing career.

On Saturday, June 14, 2025, people will gather for a peaceful “No Kings” protest. The current ongoing threats against peaceful assembly and the regime’s attempts to instigate riots cannot be ignored. The best response is to continue to turn out in force, by the hundreds of thousands, to let the regime and the world know that in this country, there are no kings. We believe in democracy. We believe that all people are created equal, and that no one is above the law.

Find your local protest here: https://www.nokings.org/

Sources:

1870 U.S. census, Hamilton, Ohio, population schedule, Cincinnati, page 155 (stamped), dwelling 473, family 907, Frances (3) in household of Richard Mooney; imaged, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com/search/collections/7163/records/38083851).

1880 U.S. census, St. Louis, Missouri, pop. sched., St. Louis, enumeration district (ED) 173, page 12 (handwritten), dwell. 82, fam. 123, Francis (13) in household of Richard Mooney; imaged, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com/search/collections/7163/records/38083851). Fannie’s mother Anna is recorded as Hannah and her birthplace is reported as Missouri rather than Ireland, but other details are consistent with the 1870 census.

1900 U.S. census, St. Louis, Missouri, pop. schedule, St. Louis, ED 306, page 11, dwell. 162, fam. 241, Richard Mooney; imaged, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com/search/collections/7602/records/76401856). Fannie was not enumerated with the family. Records of her marriage are elusive, and the family tree on FamilySearch.org appears to be inaccurate.

1910 U.S. census, St. Louis, Missouri, St. Louis, ED 304, sheet 10-B, dwell. 143, fam. 214, Fanny Sellins; imaged, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/7884/records/15032609).

FindAGrave (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/29470046/fannie-sellins), memorial 29470046, Fannie Mooney Sellins (1872–26 Aug 1919), Union Cemetery, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania; maintained by KLF (ID 46954712).

“Women Fight Sweatshop System to Save Children,” The Omaha (Nebraska) Daily News, 19 Nov 1911, p. 9B, cols. 3-4; imaged, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com/image/739124133).

“Woman Organizer Sentenced to Jail,” Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, 26 Apr 1914, p. 13, col. 1; imaged, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com/image/464986628).

“Say Judge Hates Union,” Chattanooga (Tennessee) Daily Times, 16 Feb 1915, p. 2, col. 4; imaged, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com/image/605486428).  

“Miss Fannie Sellins Asks Strike Settlement,” The (Fairmont) West Virginian, 26 Mar 1915, p. 10, col. 3; imaged, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com/image/464986628).

“Would Jail Union Girl,” The Labor Advocate (Cincinnati, Ohio), 4 Dec 1915, p. 2, col. 3; imaged, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com/image/194710736).

“Woman Defies U.S. Judge Dayton, His Injunctions, and His Jail,” The Day Book (Chicago, Illinois), 4 Apr 1914, pp. 1-3; imaged, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com/image/77814037).

“Woman Killed in Striking Miners’ Riot,” St. Louis (Missouri) Globe-Democrat, 27 Aug 1919, p. 1, col. 5; imaged, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com/image/572482698).

“Controversy in Sellens (sic) Death,” Bozeman (Montana) Daily Chronicle, 17 Oct 1919, p. 2, col. 4; imaged, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com/image/572482698).

Pennsylvania Department of Health, death cert. no. 87534, Fanny Sellens (1919); Bureau of Vital Statistics, Harrisburg; imaged, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com/search/collections/5164/records/728729). The death certificate erroneously records her birth date as 11 September 1872; it is possible the informant did not know her birth year.

Photo: Wheeling majority. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.), 02 July 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86092530/1914-07-02/ed-1/seq-8/)