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122 Michael E. Jacobson and their families cognizant of the issues of the strike and united them around a shared goal. The union used moving picture shows as a shared activity among strikers to help create a common experience for the miners and their families. Archaeologists excavated a celluloid frame in the Ludlow colony’s midden, suggesting the presence of such entertainment. Based on a celluloid frame excavated in the midden, the union allowed traveling projectionists to enter the colony. Beyond just passing time, the act of watching motion pictures helps promote a unified community. Liz Cohen (1990:123–125) has described the differences between attending a motion picture show in the colony and doing so today. Since the movies were silent, audiences actively engaged in motion picture performances by providing commentary on the events depicted on the screen. The lack of spoken dialogue in the motion pictures allowed those unable to understand English to view them. This activity ’s cross-cultural availability meant that many strikers could have shared in the experience. Sports were also effective in creating community. The union encouraged the playing of different sports to develop a public arena for strikers to participate in creating a common identity. The most visible sport was baseball. The union pushed for the construction of a field and set up games, specifically the game on Greek Easter in 1914 (O’Neal 1971:130). The game was useful in bringing people together and presenting an American identity (O’Neal 1971:130). Other forms of recreation, such as gymnastics and bocce ball, helped amuse the strikers. Baseball, however, brought the entire colony together. Members of different ethnic groups could share in an experience not controlled by the tradition by one ethnic group. It was not a Greek or an Italian game but an American one. Mike Livoda stated, “You see, they had baseball teams at these different camps . . . and we’d go and we had the best time. The miners all got along and [there was] no race barrier or nationality. It was just one big group, that’s all. And everybody just seemed to get along” (Livoda 1975). Those who did not play in the games could share in the sense of community and social practices as spectators. Recreation and public activities thus allowed the union to structure the striking families’ experience in an attempt to create a unified community. This effort could have been successful only if the families accepted this public interaction and actively joined in. The accounts discussed here suggest that the families did publicly engage each other in forming a community. Archaeological remains also suggest that they willingly conducted their household activities in public rather than isolating themselves from the community. The excavation of religious items and medals from inside tent platforms reveals the presence of ethnic and religious practices among striking households (CCWAP 2000). By cooking, playing music, and performing traditional ethnic activities, strikers and their families were trying 123 arChaeology of the MoMent to continue household practices from their houses in the coal camps in the strikers’ colony. The distribution of artifacts associated with Ludlow colony tent platforms suggests that household activities often occurred outside the tents. Spatial analyses of food-related artifacts and personal items show a higher clustering of such artifacts outside some tent outlines (CCWAP 2000:22–25; Jacobson 2006:246–253). Activities may have been conducted outside because of the tents’ small size. From the identification of excavated tent outlines, we can determine that tents were about 5 m × 6.4 m (33 m2 ) in size. For some strikers, the limited space in the tents made performing activities outside more feasible. They also may have done so because the strikers and their families were trying to be sociable and active in the community. Through recreation, the union worked to promote its ideology and the solidarity needed to win the strike. In doing so, it created a new identity in which the union acknowledged the strikers’ different ethnicities and absorbed their practices, thus giving the union full authority. Strikers needed to see themselves as sharing a common working-class identity rather than dividing themselves along ethnic lines. Only through solidarity and shared experience could the union develop such an identity among the strikers. The threat of ethnic differences was plausible in the colony, which, as mentioned earlier, contained twenty-one ethnic groups, each with its own traditions and values. By promoting shared practices, the union hoped to produce a common identity and...

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