About The Centralia Incident: a Historical Interrogation
Presented by: Daniel O’Donnel Labor Educator, Washington
State Labor Education and Research Center
On Armistice Day, November
11, 1919 an armed conflict ignited in Centralia, Washington. Tensions had been
building for some time between the local American Legion and the Industrial
Workers of the World, better known as the Wobblies. Many facts of the incident
remain bitterly contested, but a few facts are not in dispute. By the morning
of November 12th, six men were dead: four American Legionnaires, one
deputy sheriff, and one labor union organizer—who had been lynched and hung
from a bridge.
Who started the violence, who
was guilty or innocent, who were the perpetrators and who were the victims was
a subject of intense disagreement in 1919 and it remains a contested history to
this day.
About the Speaker:
Daniel O’Donnell is an instructor at the Washington
Labor Education and Research Center, based at South Seattle College. Grandson
of both lumber mill worker and a banker, he is a former union organizer and
representative. Prior to his work for labor unions, he studied labor history at
the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.