On November 11, 1919, tensions came to a head between members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)—known as the Wobblies—and members of the American Legion in Centralia, Washington, at the first Armistice Day parade after World War I. The conflict between the two groups was deep-seated. The American Legion had been chartered as a patriotic veteran’s organization just after the war. Meanwhile, the IWW had opposed U.S. participation; it was the only American labor organization to do so. A fatal confrontation between the two parties began when, as documented in the IWW’s The Centralia Case: A Chronological Digest, “an armed mob charged on the [Wobblies’] union hall from the rear rank of the Armistice Parade.” Legionnaires Warren Grimm, Arthur McElfresh, and Ben Casagranda were killed in the initial blow between the Legionnaires and the Wobblies.
Some Wobblies were able to escape during the violent fight, but the American Legion members initially captured six of the IWW union members, as well as Wesley Everest, who became a martyr to the cause. Tom Copeland explains in The Pacific Northwest Quarterly how the American Legion members “overpowered [Everest], put a belt around his neck, and dragged him back to town.” After beating him with weapons including a spike, the American Legion members—who mistook Everest for Britt Smith, a leading member of the Industrial Workers of the World in the area—lynched him. Legionnaire Dale Hubbard was killed by Everest during his pursuit for the Wobbly. Legionnaires killed John M. Haney, a “deputized” citizen, after misidentifying him as a potential Wobbly, when Haney was searching for Wobblies to arrest. In the end, four American Legion members and an IWW member were killed—three Legion members likely were killed by Wobblies, but the historical record is unclear—during the incident that became known as the Centralia Tragedy. Eleven Wobblies were swiftly arrested and charged for the events that occurred on November 11, but no one was ever arrested for the lynching of Everest.
More than one hundred years later, accounts still vary about what actually happened that day, with both the Wobblies and the American Legion and their respective supporters claiming that the other side started the conflict. The historian Michael Cohen, writing in the Journal for the Study of Radicalism, for example, reports that before the confrontation, the “Centralia Citizens Protection League and the American Legion had planned a raid on the [Industrial Workers of the World] hall well in advance.” In other words, they deliberately targeted the Wobblies. After the Centralia Tragedy, Washington State permitted the police to arrest members of the Wobblies. Cohen argues that this led to the “repression of radicalism throughout the state and up and down the west coast.”