John R. Lawson

John R. Lawson died May 12, 1945, aged 74, was a Colorado union leader and businessman. He was the leader of District 15 of the United Mine Workers of America at the time of the Ludlow Massacre which resulted in the death of 20 strikers and supporters, many of them children. He was convicted on May 3, 1915 of the murder of a deputy sheriff who died at Ludlow during the massacre at a trial held in Trinidad, Colorado and sentenced to life at hard labor but freed on appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court in June, 1917. He served as president of the Colorado Federation of Labor and on the International Executive Board of the United Mine Workers. He was a vice-president and director of the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company.

In 1915 Lawson testified before the Commission on Industrial Relations castigating John D. Rockefeller, Jr. for his ignorance regarding conditions at his coal mines and camps in Colorado describing local elections in the Rockefeller-controlled company towns in Colorado where election judges counted the votes of sheep, mules, and even box cars.

He also testified that on the night of December 17, 1903 his home in Newcastle, Colorado, and those of 4 other union organizers had been dynamited.