© 2024 Public Radio Tulsa
800 South Tucker Drive
Tulsa, OK 74104
(918) 631-2577

A listener-supported service of The University of Tulsa
classical 88.7 | public radio 89.5
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
We are working to diagnose a problem related to a power surge on KWGS and KWTU. You can listen to KWGS 89.5 FM on live radio, but you may not be able to listen online.

"1913 Massacre" --- A Woody Guthrie Ballad, a Little-Known American Tragedy, and a New Documentary

File Photo
Aired on Monday, July 9th.

"1913 Massacre" is the name of a song that Woody Guthrie wrote circa 1941; it recounts an early-20th-century tragedy that happened at the Italian Hall building in Calumet, Michigan, on Christmas Eve of 1913, when hundreds of miners, along with their families and friends, had gathered for a party. At that time, Calumet was at the heart of Michigan's then-lucrative copper-mining activity. The mine-workers gathered at the Italian Hall were on strike --- it was a bitter dispute that had been raging for months --- and at some point during the party, someone (to this day, no one knows who) falsely cried out “fire.” A panic-driven stampede ensued. Seventy-three people were crushed to death; the dead were mostly striking miners and their families. Fifty-nine of the dead were children. Now comes a new documentary film about this event --- and about the small town, and the various mysteries, connected with it. The film is also called "1913 Massacre." Our guest on this installment of ST is one of the film's co-director/producers: Louis V. Galdieri. As part of the 15th Annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, "1913 Massacre" will be screened at the Crystal Theater in Okemah, Oklahoma --- Woody's hometown, of course --- on Thursday of this week, the 12th, with showings at noon, 1:30pm, and 3pm. (More details about this film, and about its screening in Okemah, can be found here.)

Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.
Related Content