Yesterday, the IWW -- the Industrial Workers of the World -- hosted a dedication ceremony for a new monument in Centralia, Washington. The Centralia Tragedy, also known as the Centralia Conspiracy and the Armistice Day Riot, was a violent and bloody incident that occurred in Centralia on November 11, 1919, during a parade celebrating the first anniversary of Armistice Day. The conflict between the American Legion and the IWW members resulted in six deaths, others being wounded, multiple prison terms, and an ongoing and especially bitter dispute over the motivations and events that precipitated the conflict. Both Centralia and the neighboring town of Chehalis had a large number of World War I veterans, with robust chapters of the Legion and many IWW members, some of whom were also war veterans. “For almost 100 years the Legion Statue, the Sentinel, has told one side of the story,” says the IWW. “It states that the four Legion members depicted were ‘slain while on peaceful parade’. The IWW memorial counters that narrative with the statement that the IWW victims were ‘Defending Their Union Hall’”
Today’s show, which comes to us from the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast, also concerns the IWW. Ahmed White explains how American industrialists and government officials used violence and legal maneuverings to stultify the IWW and to silence its members in the early twentieth century. White teaches labor and criminal law at University of Colorado Boulder and is the author of Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers, which received the International Labor History Association Book of the Year Award in 2022.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1916; that was the day when what came to be known as the Everett Massacre took place in Washington State.
Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory @ReutherLibrary @iww
The lost Matchgirl Strike leader
MLK at the AFL-CIO in 1961 (Encore)
Woody’s resolutions
”Please Buy My Last Paper, I Want to Go Home”
Bayard Rustin, leader and lover
Capital’s Terrorists
Woody’s ”1913 Massacre”
A People’s History of Alcohol in Australia
Labor history, justice, and Jesuits
The Leadville Irish Miners’ Memorial
Art/Work: Women Printmakers of the WPA
How matchgirls sparked the British labour movement
Who “Oppenheimer” left out
The Triangle Fire: A new memorial, and ”Scenes from a Prosecution”
Weapons of the Boss
Voices of Guinness (Encore)
“The Port of Missing Men” (Encore)
The labor “Parade” that flopped (Encore)
The Irish Immigrant Miners’ Memorial (Encore)
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Irish Songs with Ken Murray
History Obscura
Historycal: Words that Shaped the World
The Rest Is History
Lore