This photo taken in downtown Centralia was used during the trials following the Armistice Day Tragedy of 1919 and is part of a larger collection of artifacts to be used to mark the 100th anniversary.
Nobody — anywhere — should ever be lynched. Period.
It was wrong on Nov. 11, 1919, in Centralia when more than a dozen vigilantes dragged Wesley Everest, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, from the city jail and lynched him — twice — from the Mellen Street Bridge before shooting his battered corpse with bullets.
I don’t know anyone who supports Everest’s lynching. In fact, I don’t want to know anyone who does.
But beyond that consensus, people disagree about exactly what transpired that afternoon on Tower Avenue in Centralia. Therein lies the issue with efforts to place a memorial in Washington Park to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Centralia Tragedy.
For it was tragic all the way around.
Four overseas veterans of World War I died.
A Centralia deputy sheriff died.
Everest was lynched.
Eight IWW members were convicted of second-degree murder. One man died in prison; the others spent between 10 and 19 years behind bars.
Attorney Elmer Smith was disbarred.
The people who lynched Everest were never brought to justice.
In 1924, the American Legion erected a statue in Washington Park that honors the four veterans “slain” on Centralia streets “while on peaceful parade.” The controversial wording on that statue, which bears the American Legion logo, is what people today want to counter with a new memorial.
But last week when the informal Centralia Armistice Day Committee once again voted on two proposed memorials, the decision was anything but unanimous. Five supported the IWW proposal; four voted for a Thurston-Lewis-Mason Central Labor Council version (although it would have been five if Centralia’s Peter Lahmann had attended); five wanted both memorials; one voted for no memorial.
The IWW memorial lists the names of union victims of the tragedy —Everest, who was lynched; eight IWW members who were “unjustly imprisoned”; and the attorney who was disbarred for supporting them. Their version bears the IWW logo at the top, clearly showing that the memorial is from their standpoint.
The proposal supported by the Labor Council would state as fact one version of what happened that afternoon, but without a logo showing whose viewpoint is represented.
The controversial part of that proposal would state: “During the parade, Centralia American Legionnaires broke ranks to raid the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) — Wobbly — Union Hall, and drive them from town. In self defense the Wobblies opened fire and killed four legionnaires, all World War I Veterans.”
Before the meeting, the Centralia Armistice Day Committee Facebook page received a post from Minnesota attorney Tom Copeland, who researched the Centralia Tragedy for two decades before writing “The Centralia Tragedy of 1919: Elmer Smith and the Wobblies,” published by the University of Washington Press in 1993.
While it seems all union members want a monument to counter the Sentinel’s wording, Copeland said, “Some want to say that the IWW was innocent. Others want to acknowledge the suffering of the IWW member killed and those imprisoned. In this process there have been attempts to shape history with claims that aren’t supported by the facts.”
“Not all the Legionnaires broke ranks,” Copeland wrote. “Some had no idea that a raid was planned.”
He also noted that saying IWW members shot in self-defense isn’t entirely accurate as some witnesses said shooters outside the union hall — at another Centralia hotel and on Seminary Hill — fired on parade marchers.
“To say that the IWW simply responded in justifiable self-defense after an attack on their hall is misleading,” Copeland wrote. “There is no definite evidence of whether the attack came first or the shooting came first.”
He believes a contingent of Legionnaires broke off to attack the hall, which would have been attacked whether the Wobblies had fired or not.
“The Wobblies were not blameless,” Copeland wrote. “They killed four men. We can take their side, as I do, and we can decry the injustice done to them, but we shouldn’t try to create a counter history that is as misleading as the Legionnaire monument.”
Mary Garrison, who supports the IWW monument, read Copeland’s comments at the meeting.
“Since this is a monument to the IWW, it seems to me that the views of the current members of the IWW should be given significant weight,” Copeland said. “After all, it’s a monument to the IWW.”
I couldn’t agree more.
And, what’s most important, unlike the Labor Council’s proposal, the IWW memorial contains the organization’s logo, clearly and honestly stating that this is the IWW’s viewpoint. Just as the Sentinel contains the American Legion logo.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
