After 105 years, few thought a new chapter would be written about the Centralia Tragedy of 1919. However, an article in the prestigious Pacific Northwest Quarterly sheds new light on the case. Written by legal author Tom Copeland, the article details interviews by agents of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), the precursor of the FBI. During the first days and weeks after the Tragedy, BOI agents sought out witnesses to the event. Eventually, agents compiled eyewitness accounts from 18 Centralia-area residents: three of whom were across the street from the IWW hall during the attack, and importantly, one of the Legionnaires that rushed the front door of the hall that afternoon. Stunningly, these interviews were not shared with the defense team during the criminal trial of the imprisoned IWW members who survived the Tragedy.
The story begins with Woodrow Wilson and his anti-radical, anti-labor stances. Wilson saw the IWW as a danger to the business class and the government’s WWI efforts. Although the IWW never officially opposed the war, the union was clearly against workers killing workers at the behest of the oligarchs. During the war, the IWW continued its decades old efforts to organize workers, fight for the eight-hour day, and push for worker protections by conducting work actions and strikes.
The war was making the employing class rich, and the US government saw opposition to the war as an existential threat. They teamed up to pass restrictive laws designed specifically to target the IWW. The passage of the Espionage Act (1917) and criminal syndicalism laws made it illegal to belong to any organization that espoused fundamental industrial or political reform. As Copeland finds, “This repression of the IWW ignored all constitutional rights and civil liberties.”
The US government and local officials shut down virtually every IWW hall and arrested everyone carrying an IWW membership card, arresting them and putting them in detention camps or prison. In Bisbee, AZ, local officials rounded up 1300 striking miners, loaded them into cattle cars, and dumped them 200 miles out into the desert. In Butte, MT, vigilantes lynched IWW organizer Frank Little for his efforts to assist mine workers after the Granite Mountain Mine disaster that killed 168 miners, to this day the highest death toll of any hard rock mining accident in US history.
The IWW had been organizing in Centralia, WA for years. They had opened a union hall there in 1918, only to have it burned out and its members run out of town. In early 1919 they reopened the hall in direct opposition to local business leaders. Here in the narrative, Copeland brings to light the involvement of the BOI in suppressing evidence related to the events of November 11th, 1919 – the Centralia Armistice Day Parade.
The agents of the BOI uncovered witnesses that corroborated the IWW’s narrative of the event. The IWW hall was attacked before shots were fired. Especially revealing is the account of Frank Bickford. Bickford was an American Legion member who was marching in the parade, and with several other members rushed the doors of the union hall. He was standing next to the Legionnaire who forced the locked door of the hall. His statement was clear – the gunfire erupted after the door was broken down. As we all know, all H*** broke loose at that point; eventually, culminating in the lynching of Fellow Worker Wesley Everest, imprisonment of eight Wobblies, and disbarment of their lawyer.
Copeland condenses the evidence to a succinct point; “… from the preponderance of the evidence, the best conclusion that can be reached is that a few former servicemen from the parade did charge the IWW hall before any shots were fired by the Wobblies.”
At the time of the Tragedy, there was no requirement that evidence be shared between the prosecution and defense. The defense team was aware of some of the witness statements obtained by the BOI’s investigation. It’s hard to assess the impact had these witnesses testified at trial. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that anything would have changed the verdict, given the amount of witness and jury intimidation, and the judicial prejudice shown during the subsequent trial orchestrated by the American Legion and business interests.
What is striking about this resurfaced evidence, is – in this writers’ opinion – that it exonerates the IWW members defending their union hall. The parade of November 11th and subsequent raid was preplanned and was not peaceful. The IWW Union Hall was attacked with the intention of driving the IWW out of town – again.
The deliberate withholding of evidence by the BOI might not have affected the verdict. However, it is obvious that a full understanding of the events of November 11th might have changed the historical narrative understood by its citizens. Unfortunately, the anti-IWW storyline that prevailed only blinded the citizens to the legitimate demands of the IWW for a decent living, safe working conditions, and a society that values workers.
The fight to bring to light the true events of that day has been a long and arduous battle for the IWW. Every year since the Tragedy, Wobs have gathered to commemorate and honor its martyred members at their gravesites in and around Centralia. In 2024, Centralia citizens and members of the IWW gathered to commemorate a 3-ton granite memorial with a plaque honoring its members and their attorney, Elmer Smith. The memorial to the “Union Victims of the Centralia Tragedy of 1919” sits next to the memorial to the fallen Legionnaires in Centralia’s Washington Park. With the placement of the memorial, the IWW is hoping to bring to life the full story of the events of November 11th, 1919.
In 2023, the IWW petitioned Washington State Governor Jay Inslee for a posthumous pardon for the eight Wobs unjustly convicted and imprisoned. Now with these revelations brought to life by Copeland’s scholarly analysis of the events, we again are hoping for justice for Eugene Barnett, Ray Becker, Bert Bland, O.C. Bland, Wesley Everest, John Lamb, James McInerney, Loren Roberts, Brit Smith, and Elmer Smith.
We Shall Never Forget.
This article originally ran in the Seattle Worker on November 1st, 2024 and has been reprinted here with permission.
The Pacific Northwest Quarterly is a peer-reviewed journal published by the University of Washington (Seattle). Tom Copeland’s article is in Volume 114, Number 4 (Fall 2023) if you click here.