Fannie Sellins

Who was Fannie Sellins?

Fannie Sellins was an American union organizer.

Born Fanny Mooney in New Orleans, Louisiana, she married Charles Sellins in St. Louis, Missouri. After his death she worked in a garment factory to support her four children. She helped to organize Local # 67 of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in St. Louis, where she became a negotiator for 400 women locked out of a garment factory. Thus she came to the attention of Van Bittner, president of District 5 of the United Mine Workers of America.

In 1913, she moved to begin work for the mine workers union in West Virginia. Her work, she wrote, was to distribute "clothing and food to starving women and babies, to assist poverty stricken mothers and bring children into the world, and to minister to the sick and close the eyes of the dying." She was arrested once in Colliers, West Virginia for defying an anti-union injunction. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson intervened for her release.

Sellins had promised to obey the judge's order against picketing. She returned to Colliers from Fairmont, W.Va. and immediately broke her promise by challening U.S. District Court Judge Alston G. Dayton to arrest her. He did.