Centralia, WA–The Industrial Workers of the World dedicated the ‘Union Victims’ monument in Centralia, Washington on Sunday June 23rd following years of effort by the union’s Centralia Monument Committee. The monument is located in George Washington Park right next to the 100-year-old American Legion monument ‘The Sentinel’ and right across the street from the famous mural ‘The Resurrection of Wesley Everest.’
An enthusiastic audience of 40 gathered for the formal unveiling of the new granite monument. There were IWW present from Portland, Centralia, Olympia, Tacoma, Bremerton, Seattle, Everett, and Bellingham, as well as a couple at-large members who had never before met another Wob. The Monument Committee asked all the Centralia residents in attendance, 20 or so, old and young, to step forward to symbolically receive the monument as the union’s gift to the city.
The story should be well-known in Wobblydom. In November 11, 1919, four Legion men were shot when they kicked in the doors and windows of the IWW hall. 10 or 11 Wobs were arrested, while a couple others managed to escape and were never identified. It is not known who, if anyone, other than Fellow Worker Wesley Everest, fired a weapon during the attack. That night FW Everest was dragged from the jail and lynched. The other Wobs were tried and convicted of second degree murder in one of the great show trials of the Red Scare. Five jurors later swore they had been intimidated by the prosecution and recanted their guilty verdicts.
During the presentation, a brief account of the post-imprisonment lives of the IWW members named on the plaque was presented: in addition to Wesley Everest, they are FWs Eugene Barnett, Britt Smith, O.C. Bland, Bert Bland, James McInerney, John Lamb and Loren Roberts, as well as their dedicated attorney, Elmer Smith. Virtually all were Centralia-area residents who returned to the area after prison, and they are buried in local cemeteries.
IWW speaker Dave Tucker of Bellingham acknowledged the unions and Labor Councils who contributed money and labor: Laborers International 252, Northwest Washington and Kitsap Central Labor Councils, Firefighters State Council, and Firefighters District Council 7, a couple dozen IWW branches, the General Administration’s Siitonen Fund, the workers in Vietnam who quarried the 3-ton granite pedestal, the Centralia Monument Company who produced the final monument, and the couple hundred individual workers who donated hard earned nickels and dollars.
A few minutes of silence were observed to mark the death of IWW member and former General Executive Board chair Dylan Brooks of Olympia, a young man who passed away from cancer on Saturday morning.
The dedication ceremony featured a poem by Wobbly bard Ralph Chaplin, ‘Mourn Not the Dead’ and concluded with all in attendance enthusiastically belting out the British Transport Workers Union’s inspiring song ‘Hold the Fort’ from the IWW’s Songs of the Workers– also known as the ‘Little Red Songbook’.
The ‘Union Victims’ monument marks an important event in Centralia’s checkered past, as it now acknowledges a different telling of the Centralia Tragedy than has been previously admitted in public.
The Monument Committee will soon provide a self-guided online tour to sites associated with the events of November 11, 1919. For anyone passing through Centralia on Interstate 5, stop off to see the monument. George Washington Park is just a 5 minute detour.