Centralia massacre (Washington)
Following World War I, labor relations reached a fever pitch in Western Washington. No place is more notorious than Centralia, Washington. There, at an Armistice Day Parade in 1919, American Legionnaires attacked an IWW (International Workers of the World, often called Wobblies) Labor Hall. It was the third Labor Hall that had been opened in Centralia. The first had been closed after the building's owner discovered he was renting to Wobblies, and the second had been destroyed by vigilantes during a parade in 1917 to support the Red Cross. Unbeknownst to those who engineered the 1919 attack, not the Legionnaires, but civic leaders from Centralia, the Wobblies had positioned armed guards on roof tops, in windows of surrounding buildings, and other places. When the Legionnaires forced the doors to the Hall, gunfire broke out, although which side fired first is disputed. Two Legionnares were killed and several were wounded in the ensuing battle. A number of Wobblies were immediately captured and held in the city jail, along with local lawyer, Elmer Smith, who had previously provided counsel to the Wobblies, and was known locally for his opposition to U.S. involvement in World War I. One of the captured Wobblies, Wesley Everest, had been apprehended by pursuing Legionnaires near the Skookumchuck River, but not before killing two of his pursuers. Later that night the city's electricity was shut down, and a crowd invaded the jail, took Everest to a local bridge crossing the Chehalis River and lynched him. In the subsequent trial, moved to nearby Montesano, several Wobblies were convicted of second degree murder and sent to prison. Ultimately all were released due to a public campaign spear-headed by Elmer Smith, the Centralia attorney who had initially been jailed with the Wobblies. A bronze statue of a doughboy, erected to honor the four Legionnaires killed in the Massacre, still stands in Centralia's George Washington Park. In 1999 the owner of the nearby former Elks building organized the commission of a mural to memorialize Wesley Everest. Currently the best popular book on the subject of the Massacre is Wobbly Wars, the Centralia Story by John McCleland. There is also a fine biography of Smith, titled The Centralia Tragedy of 1919: Elmer Smith and the Wobblies. The literature and primary material on this subject is extensive.
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This writer wishes to submit just a few personal reminisces. When I was young on the way to grandmothers house in Portland we could not stop for lunch in Centralia, because that is where the Wobblies had been lynched, and we were a union family, my dad actually an organizer in the Puget Sound area. Many years later I found myself leading a seminar for older people in Centralia, and to my surprise one of the persons at the table said that during the night of the lynching a family member sent the lynchers and Everest on their way, that they "couldn't lynch the Wobbly on his property." And another person at the table, said his dad was a Wobbly in those days. Another fascinating connection: Centralia's most famous son, Merce Cunningham the modern dancer, is the son of the prosecuter of the Wobblies in Montesano.