Don MacGregor, labor reporter and hero of the the Colorado coal miners, was killed in Miñaca, Mexico, on March 28, 1916, reportedly by Villistas. MacGregor had fled to Mexico to avoid prosecution for the part he had played as the leader of the Battle of Walsenburg during the Colorado Coalfield War, a war waged by the miner's against the gunthug infested militia after the Ludlow Massacre. At the time of his death, he was covering the Mexican Revolution under pen name of David Bruce.

The Children of the Ludlow Tent Colony

During the Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913-14, MacGregor worked for the pro-union Denver Express. He was at the Ludlow Tent Colony on September 23, 1913, the first day of the strike, as 20,000 men women and children, evicted from the company towns, made their way into the various tent colonies set up for them by their union, the United Mine Workers of America. MacGregor described The Exodus:

No one who did not see that exodus can imagine its pathos. The exodus from Egypt was a triumph, the going forth of a people set free. The exodus of the Boers from Cape Colony was the trek of a united people seeking freedom.

But this yesterday, that wound its bowed, weary way between the coal hills on the one side and the far-stretching prairie on the other, through the rain and the mud, was an Exodus of woe, of a people leaving known fears for new terrors, a hopeless people seeking new hope, a people born to suffering going forth to new suffering.

And they struggled along the roads interminably. In an hour's drive between Trinidad and Ludlow, 57 wagons were passed, and others seemed to be streaming down to the main road from every by-path.

Every wagon was the same, with its high piled furniture, and its bewildered woebegone family perched atop. And the furniture! What a mockery to the state's boasted riches. Little piles of rickety chairs. Little piles of miserable looking straw bedding. Little piles of kitchen utensils. And all so worn and badly used they would have been the scorn of any second-hand dealer on Larimer Street.

After the massacre of the miners and their families at Ludlow on April 20, 1914, MacGregor threw down his pen and picked up a gun. He led the miners who were defending the Hogback Ridge above the town Walsenburg. The miners were determined to save the remaining tent colonies from the gunthug infested militia which had destroyed the Ludlow Tent Colony after the massacre.

Miners Prepared for Battle

The following was published by the Chicago Day Book on May 5, 1914:

"REMEMBER LUDLOW!" WAS THE CRY OF
MINERS IN WALSENBURG BATTLE

(One of the battles fought Wednesday, April 29, in the hills of Colorado, when the maddened-strikers set out to drive the Rockefeller gunmen from the district, was on the heights of Walsenburg. The dispatch said that Don MacGregor, a newspaperman well known in Chicago and Denver, was in command all day of this successful fight. MacGregor was asked to tell about the battle for this newspaper. The following is his account.-- Editor.)

----------
BY DONALD MACGREGOR

In Camp, Walsenburg, Col., May 5.
-"Remember Ludlow!"

The Ruins of the Ludlow Tent Colony

.....Men don't scare very easy when they're fighting to keep other men from shooting up and burning their homes.

And that's what I honestly believe would have happened if we'd lost the day.

The militia fired a steady stream of lead at us. Bullets spattered against the rocks. They whizzed by in the air. They kicked up the dust by our faces.

And all the time the machine guns kept up a persistent tattoo. There's something pretty about the sound of a machine gun. It's so regular. But it isn't pretty when it's turned against you.

All day long I heard that steady br-r-r-r-r-r and listened to the bullets whizz around me.

We suffered, but we only lost one man. He was killed by our own men. He lost his "uniform" a white handkerchief tied around the left arm. He walked into a party of our men, still carrying his rifle. They took him for a Rockefeller gunman. Eleven bullets found his body. Two other of our men were wounded.

I think it's all over now. The federal troops are here. We welcome them. For it can't be that the great government of the United States would turn against us like the state has.

We think we're going to be safe from gunmen. At least, every miner prays so.

Ludlow is going to become a memory instead of an ever-present dread. We won't have to fight days and watch nights to protect helpless women and children.

For that was the sole cause of the battle of Walsenburg. It was because of Ludlow that practically every striker in this district armed himself.

We aren't pleading any defense. We don't feel that we need one. Women we knew, children we played with, have been shot and burned.

We're protecting them now.

Wouldn't you?

[Photograph added.]

We don't know for certain exactly when Don MacGregor left for Colorado and landed in Chihuahua, Mexico. Once there, he began reporting under the name of David Bruce. The first reports that I can find from Mexico under that pen name were published in various American newspapers from April through August of 1915. MacGregor's articles were generally pro-Villa. More articles followed in October and December of 1915. MacGregor's last report from Mexico was published under the name of David Bruce in the April 1916 edition of the International Socialist Review. The Evansville Press of Indiana published his "Last Message" on April 4th: :

In the first days after his death, newspapers gave various accounts: that he was tortured and then shot by Villistas, and that he was put before a firing squad. The Day Book, voiced doubt that he had, indeed, been killed, but stated that if he had met his end in Mexico, then the ultimate blame for his death landed upon the shoulders of John D. Rockefeller Jr.

From the Chicago Day Book of April 3, 1916:

Death of Donald MacGregor, former city editor of The Day Book and also known as a leader in the revolt of Colorado miners against the Rockefeller iron hand in that state, is reported from El Paso, Texas.

Friends of MacGregor here do not take the report as final. They say they want more details. The news is based on a story brought to Chihuahua by J. H. Locke, an American citizen who was in Minaca during a Villa raid. Locke's story was told to Americans in Chihuahua who escaped from that city and arrived Saturday in El Paso.

Villa captured a string of towns of which Minaca was one. Here, the story goes, Villa announced a policy of killing every "gringo," and in line with this three Americans, a German and an Englishman, were put to death. MacGregor was a Scotchman, known as a British subject. His newspaper letters were signed as by David Bruce.

Floyd Gibbons for the Tribune, Wallace Smith for the American and Kent Hunter for the Examiner are now in Mexico. All were friends of MacGregor and further details of the reported death are expected though it may be weeks before definite word comes.

John A. Malloy, clerk in the election commissioner's office, was MacGregor's closet chum while he was in Chicago. Malloy said today:

Whatever has happened to MacGregor in Mexico can be blamed straight on the Rockefeller government of Colorado. MacGregor left the United States because of an indictment for murder voted against him secretly by a grand jury in Trinidad. With a Rockefeller governor and a Rockefeller judge and prosecuting attorney, MacGregor knew he would stand about as fat a chance of acquittal as John Lawson. He didn't want the kind of a frame-up with a life sentence such as was handed Lawson.

There was romance around MacGregor. When he quit newspaper work in Chicago three years ago, he went to Colorado for his health. He was living in a shack in the mountains when word came of the Ludlow massacre where drunken militiamen and gunmen shot and burned women and children. He went to Walsenberg [Walsenburg] and led 80 miners with rifles in making a stand against the militia... If Mac is dead the labor movement has lost one of its best fighters.

Mothers and daughters were crucified at Ludlow on the cross of human liberty. Their crucifixion was effected by the operators' paid gunmen...These dead will go down in history as the hero victims of the burnt offering laid on the altar of [the] Great God Greed.

[-Denver Express on the Ludlow Massacre.]

Tomorrow "WE NEVER FORGET: Miners' Hero Don MacGregor" will continue with more on the circumstances surrounding the death of this intrepid young reporter.

SOURCES

Hellraisers Journal
C99 Tag: Don MacGregor-
http://caucus99percent.com/tags/don-macgregor
DK Tag: Don MacGregor-
http://www.dailykos.com/news/DonMacGregor

Newspapers.com Searches:
"David Bruce" Mexico Villa
1914 = Zero relevant.
1915 = 23
https://www.newspapers.com/search/#query=%22david+bruce%22+villa+mexico&...
1916 = 33 (none with articles written by Bruce/MacGregor.)
https://www.newspapers.com/search/#query=%22david+bruce%22+villa+mexico&...

IMAGES
Children of Ludlow
http://www.du.edu/ludlow/gall1a.html
Armed Miners, from The Red Nurse
Helen Schloss at the Ludlow Massacre
http://upstateearth.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-red-nurse-helen-schloss-at-...
The Ludlow Tent Colony Destroyed
http://todayinlaborhistory.wordpress.com/tag/ludlow/
Don MacGregor Last Message, Evansville Press, IN, Apr 4, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/137802666/
Ludlow Massacre, Crucified
http://john-adcock.blogspot.com/2012/06/rogues-gallery-socialist-cartoon...

See also:
WE NEVER FORGET April 20, 1914 The Ludlow Massacre
-by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/4/20/1083217/-WE-NEVER-FORGET-April-2...