Ella May Wiggins

Ella May Wiggins (1900-14 September 1929) was a union activist and labor singer who was killed by an armed anti-union mob during the Loray Mill Strike in Gastonia, NC. Her murderers, who were widely known to the public as she was killed in broad daylight, were acquitted of all charges; meanwhile, her communist comrades were persecuted for the shooting of Police Chief Anderholt, about whom Wiggins had written a song days before her murder.