Warren Grimm - Centralia Massacre

Centralia Massacre

In Centralia, Washington, where the IWW had been organizing lumber workers, the lumber interests made plans to get rid of the IWW. On November 11, 1919, Armistice Day, the Legion paraded through town with rubber hoses and gas pipes, and the IWW prepared for an attack. When the Legion passed the IWW hall, shots were fired – it is unclear who fired first. They stormed the hall, there was more firing, and Warren Grimm and Arthur McElfresh of the Legionnaires were killed in this initial confusion of shots. Of the seven Wobblies inside the hall, only Wesley Everest and Ray Becker fired any shots. It is unclear, of the men posted at other stations, who or how many fired upon the raiding Legionnaires.

Inside the headquarters was an IWW member, a lumberjack named Wesley Everest, who had been in France as a soldier while the IWW national leaders were on trial for obstructing the war effort. Everest was in army uniform and carrying a rifle. He emptied it into the crowd, dropped it, and ran for the woods, followed by a mob. He started to wade across the river, found the current too strong, turned, shot the leading man dead, threw his gun into the river, and fought the mob with his fists. They dragged him back to town behind an automobile, suspended him from a telegraph pole, took him down, locked him in jail. That night, his jailhouse door was broken down, he was dragged out, put on the floor of a car, and then he was taken to a bridge, hanged, and his body riddled with bullets.

No one was ever arrested for Everett's murder, but eleven Wobblies were put on trial for killing an American Legion leader during the parade, and six of them spent fifteen years in prison.