Centralia Massacre (Washington) - Aftermath

Aftermath

The captured Wobblies were charged with murder and the resulting trial was held in Montesano, in nearby Grays Harbor County. After a trial that received national coverage, eight Wobblies were convicted of second degree murder, two were acquitted (including Elmer Smith), and two had all charges against them dropped. Those convicted were sentenced to prison terms of 25–40 years, far in excess of the standard 10-year sentence of the day.

As time passed and passions cooled, a public campaign spearheaded by Elmer Smith was eventually able to secure the release of those Wobblies still in prison. Although their convictions were never overturned, all of the remaining Wobblies save Ray Becker were paroled in 1931 and 1932. Continuing to maintain his innocence, Becker refused parole and was eventually pardoned in 1939, with his sentence commuted to time served.

A bronze statue of a doughboy, erected to honor the four Legionnaires killed in the massacre, was erected in Centralia's George Washington Park. Although E. M. Viquesney received a letter in 1921 from the American Legion informing him his statue, Spirit of the American Doughboy, had won the organization's design award competition and was to be the monument placed at Centralia, in 1924, Alonzo Victor Lewis's statue The Sentinel was placed there instead.

In 1999, the owner of the nearby former Elks building commissioned a mural to memorialize Wesley Everest and the Wobblies.

The incident also features prominently in John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy.

A brief scene of the massacre is also featured in the 2011 film J. Edgar.