Black Thursday: Mass Execution of Molly Maguires Based on Pinkerton Infiltration

Ten Irish-American coal miners were hanged in Pennsylvania on “Black Thursday,” the first mass execution in a coordinated corporate-state campaign against labor organizing. In 1873, Reading Railroad President Franklin B. Gowen hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to infiltrate the Molly Maguires union organizers. Pinkerton agent James McParlan spent two and a half years undercover using the alias “James McKenna.” Based almost entirely on McParlan’s testimony, 20 men were sentenced to death. Six were hanged in Pottsville and four in Mauch Chunk (Jim Thorpe) on this single day, with ten more executed over the next three years. Gowen himself served as district attorney, prosecuting cases built on evidence from his own paid infiltrator. Most historians now agree the trials were “an outrageous perversion of the criminal justice system.” Pennsylvania granted pardons to the executed men over a century later in 1979, acknowledging the judicial corruption that enabled corporations to use state power to execute union organizers.