Gray

Hellraisers Journal: Gunthug Walter Belk Acquitted of Murder of UMWA Organizer Gerald Lippiatt

Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones

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Saturday February 5, 1916
From the United Mine Workers Journal: Imported Gunthug Walter Belk Acquitted

From the Journal of February 3rd:

Justice Ravished
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Gerald Lippiatt.jpg
Organizer Gerald Lippiatt, Center
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In our last issue, commenting on the action of the miners' convention in pledging moral and financial support to the miners whom the men in power in the State of Colorado are attempting to condemn to felons' cells for daring to resist the oppression of the economic masters and their henchmen, their hired armies, we remarked that the counties of that State where the coal mines are located "were not ruled, but terrorized."

In the last week we have had further proof of the truth of that statement.

Walter Belk, imported from West Virginia to Colorado and there employed because of his reputation as a mankiller who could be depended upon to use his ready gun any time in the service of those who would pay him his price, was acquitted, on the instruction of the judge on the bench to the jury, of the charge of killing Gerald Lippiatt, union organizer, on the streets of Trinidad just before the opening of the strike in Southern Colorado in the fall of 1913.