Michael P. Roller’s work, An Archaeology of Structural Violence, is a much needed and critical addition to the field of labor studies, critical archeology, and working- class American history. Roller’s major focus in this study is the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and its subsequent impact on places like the town of Hazelton, Pennsylvania. In that year, a mining- company- sponsored sheriff’s department fired into a crowd of striking mineworkers. The result was that the sheriff, with the backing of the mining companies, murdered nineteen workers instantly and injured over forty others.
The ethnic makeup of the miners is of particular interest, Roller and other historians have argued. Comprised mostly of Southern and Eastern European migrants, the miners had carried an American flag with them on their march. The miners argued for the same basic rights that previous, earlier generations of migrants from Northern and Western Europe had received. Thus,...
