That was the day that federal agents stormed the offices of the Industrial Workers of the World in New York City, looking for evidence connecting the organization to radical Communists or Anarchists.
The ransacked office was part of the infamous “Palmer Raids,” when Attorney General Alexander Palmer responded to the growing Red Scare hysteria by raiding the offices of leftist organizations and arresting thousands.
Hundreds of immigrants to the United States were deported during the raids without legal due process.
The 1917 Russian Revolution had stoked fears about a spreading communist threat.
Newspaper headlines helped to drum up public panic.
A week before the IWW raid, a headline on the front page of the Evening World, published in New York City declared, “Reds in U.S. Plotted Revolution; Deportation for All Radicals.”
The day after the IWW raid, a Washington Post headline read “Law to Crush Reds.”
Writing in 1920, Attorney General Palmer warned “The chief appeal communism makes is to “The Worker.” If they can lure the wage-earner to join their own gang of thieves, if they can show him that he will be rich if he steals, so far they have succeeded in betraying him to their own criminal course.”
Palmer went on to describe how Communists had “stirred discontent,” “caused irritating strikes,” and “infected our social ideas with the disease of their own minds and their unclean morals.”
Palmers’ references to workers and irritating strikes demonstrate that he perceived the labor movement as part of the communist threat.
Anti-Communist hysteria took its toll on the most radical elements of the U.S. labor movement, especially the IWW.
September 19 - The End of My Sweet Jennie
September 18 - The Atlanta Compromise
September 17 - Striking in the South
September 16 - NHL Managers Lock Out Players
September 15 - The Invergordon Mutiny
September 14 - The Murder of Ella Mae Wiggins
September 13 - Attica!
September 12 - The Making of a National Treasure
September 11 - The Christiana Riot
September 10 - Minneapolis Printers Organize
September 9 - The Hanapepe Massacre
September 8 - Defying Nazi Occupation
September 7 - The Federal Employees Compensation Act
September 6 - Jane Addams is Born
September 5 - The First Labor Day Parade
September 4 - The Peekskill Riots
September 3 - Locked in to Die
September 2 - Protecting Pensions
September 1 - The Boilermakers
August 31 - The Battle of Blair Mountain
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