The firing of two Fort Smith Southwestern Bell telephone operators who were organizing a labor union led other women who worked for the company to walk out and strike on September 19, 1917. The women demanded that the fired workers get their jobs back, but the company refused. The mayor of Fort Smith tried to get Southwestern Bell to meet with the workers, but the company would not agree.
U.S. Labor Department negotiators, Arkansas’s governor, and labor leader Samuel Gompers also tried to intercede, to no avail. Sympathetic industries in the area joined the telephone operators in a general strike that shut the city down for nine days, as well as the coal mining that was essential to the effort to win World War I.
Finally, federal mediator Robert Keating convinced everyone to return to work, promising to continue pursuing their demands with Southwestern Bell. The telephone operators returned to work on December 27, ending the four-month strike. Their demands were never met.
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