the fact we have presidential libraries created to house records. and especially for the most recent ones the records won't be open for a hundred years. instead we're paying for celebration and legacy building. >> sunday night at 8 eastern on c-span q and a. with the house and senate back in session on tuesday september 5, we're taking a look at the work the members of congress will be handling. the federal budget. tax reform, the debt ceiling and healthcare. join us for a review of what's ahead for congress. thursday night at 8 eastern. on c-span. and c-span.org and listen on the free c-span radio app. now providence college professor jeffrey johnson teaches a class about the 1916 bombing of a parade in san francisco. that killed ten and wounded 40. the bombing took place in what was called preparedness day organized by probusiness groups

to keep people vigilant in the case the united states entered world war i. the attack remains the worst act of terrorism in san francisco history. this is about 50 minutes. well, good morning thanks for coming. i appreciate you all being here on a drizzly day at providence college. today i wanted to share with you i think a story and a moment in american history that is one of the, for me, more important moments of the late 19th and early 20th century. holds a lot of significance in the period of the guilded age and the progressive era. it also happens to be a the subject of my new book. i have been living and breathing in this period and in this moment. dh is very significant for 1916 and really for the nation as i this i'll try to make clear. so what i'll do today is start by setting up the context of san

francisco in 1916 during the moment during this summer. and then i'll spend time in really three parts talking about why it's significant. and why it's important to american history and our story. let me begin by framing this story about this 1916 moment. many of you have probably seen this character before. mark twain. of course the famous american play write and he had many quips during his life. one of them that he said is he said the coldest winter i ever spent was a summer in san francisco. one of his jokes. of course if you have been to san francisco you know this to be true. he said it about the bay city. july 1916 though seemed different. the air was pretty mild, the summer weather had turned very fair and pleasant. local weather forecaster who wrote for the san francisco chronicle predicted a light wind for july 22, 1916.

it had settled into a pleasant summer. there was a great deal of excitement voursurrounding thaty july. for many reasons. san francisco was a far cry from the city it had been with the famous san francisco earthquake a decade earlier. a famous moment in 1906 that many have heard of. the city rebuilt itself since 1906 and the prooefrs decade. in fact so much so the city had just had a world's fair. and hosted one in 1915. as a celebration of this revitalized city. and there were lots of other things happening in the city. you can see this gentlemen this is charles hues. he was a judge who was also running for president. in 1916. so he came to san francisco and promised republican party kind of loyalist he would win by an overwhelming majority. his words. if you've not heard of president hues, that's probably because he

didn't win by an overwhelming majority. he visited the city that summer as part of his campaign. another moment that happened around this weekend of july 22, is that the new alaska steamship line which was a brand new shipping line announced new service from san francisco to new york. for the first time utilizing the new and innovative panama canal. a city really arrive and had had famous moments happening. if you took a quick glance at san francisco in 1915 and 1916 it seemed like a city that had revitalized and seemed very much on the scene. the economy was strong. the city had all kinds of sort of prooefevious history as a la city. ferment and unrest. by this point, the city seemed at relative peace while as you know the rest of the world was at war. well on the morning of july 22, 1916, if we can talk about this

saturday. there was a woman by the name of mrs. wine more a young mother from oakland, california. and she made her way across the bay from oakland to san francisco, that day and that morning. she took the journey with her husband, lloyd. and her two young children. virginia age four, and billy age 2. they left their 53rd avenue home in oakland to go across the bay to san francisco. really in a trip that was about the children. they were going to san francisco so they could marvel in the spectacle of the city's much anticipated preparedness day parade. by this point as many of you know of course this is 1916. 1914, in europe war had been raging. word war 1 was very much under way. the united states with involvement in the war a real possibility started to have parades hike this. as a show of patriotism and maybe for the possibility of

entering the war. to show enthusiasm for the possibility of world war i. newspaper accounts for the parade when they traveled downtown had estimated about a 50,000 people would show up and witness this parade including the family. it seemed to kind of symbolize the harmonious moment of patriotism in san francisco. perhaps. people could also buy along market street a famous street in downtown san francisco. in fact where the parade would go up. they could buy at local markets and shops, flags and buttons, and banners to demonstrate their patriotism. the san francisco chronicle as people prepared and had bought things published the parade route. up market street from the fairy street. still an iconic building. and turn west onto van f street.

there was anticipation about the parade and sno wonder the family went downtown. when the parade began, and when it started here's a shot of what the parade looked like. this is market street. you get a sense of what is looked like. the official count said 51,300 in attendance to see the parade. 52 bands participated. about 2134 different groups, soldiers, national guard, many veterans from the spanish american war, nurses groups, boy scouts you name it. curiously though, no labor groups. no unions, no working claz folks. they purposefully chose to boycott the event. to send a message. about what this display might have been meant to them. well one oregon newspaper called the parade the greatest demonstration in sport of a national movement that the west had ever seen.

so here was this huge out pouring for the moment. once in the city the wine mores grabbed a spot. all four of them. by this point as you see here, jammed shoulder to shoulder with the 50,000 plus onlookers. well what happened next just after 2:00 p.m. about a half hour into the parade the local press would deem one of the most pathetic results of the explosion and of the parade. as she held billy up in her arms to get a better look at the parade, a bomb exploded. and it instantly took off both of her legs this young 26 year-old mother. surgeons quickly scrambled to help her. but the wounds as you would imagine proved fatal. dazed from the shock, her husband lloyd stumbled away. very kind of upset of course understandably by all of this. and the two children miraclously

survived the attack. it was an overwhelmingly kipd of festive and sunny day, that had turned inexplicably dark. the blast ultimately will kill ten parade goers that day. including of course mrs. wine more. and shrapnel would wound about another 40 people. that had been witnessing the parade. so the tragedy i this that struck the family and many others at 2:06 p.m. on july 22, 1916, stands as an under appreciated and yet critical point in american history. taken on the whole it marked 30 years of trouble between capitol and labor. it showed how the nation might respond to such an unsettling event. particularly how a nation might deal with discontent and labor. critics of the war, immigrants

in the country. just how the u.s. might just handle a high point i think of wartime dissent and division. this was a decisive event for one summer and perhaps longer that turned lt nations attention on san francisco, and the nation. as we teetered on the edge of water. so we know a lot about labor violence and we know a lot about conflict during the guilden age and progressive era. i tell this story in some ways because i think it matters in the broader context of american history. particularly in the early 20th century. what it gets us to think about perhaps is how war and antiradicalism seem to intertwine during a time of dissent. so i want to talk about why this matters really in three parts today. and take this story and this real tragedy and how we might make sense of it. i'll give you a few reasons for

or frame work for how i'll talk about this. the first theme i think in why this is so important, it revealed for sure a division between labor and capital. and as you see here, also a reaction to the government. particularly dissent during world war i. objections to the war. secondly the after math of the parade and the bombing also revealed some very serious and stark antiimmigrant attitudes. sometimes they would rolled into antiradical attitudes as well. but during a time of war the nation really had to grapple with a radicalism and that segment of the population. and finally as you'll see it also revealed and kind of uncovered a problematic criminal justice system. certainly as many people were

very nervous and fearful of radicalism gone awry in the country. so let me take up the first point and talk about the relationship between capital and labor and the reaction to the government and criticism of war. as this patriotism at least super officially seemed to take route. san francisco was an interesting kind of labor city. i have a picture here. this is of course more than a decade before the bombing. these are dock workers in san francisco. san francisco in many ways replicated or paralleled the way that labor functioned in the country at the time. you could expect a worker in the early 20th century to work long days for low wages and often in dangerous conditions. depending on yn occupation. a realtime of reform and activist to bring greater right, fairer wages, safer working conditions. all of those things to workers.

san francisco was very much a part of that. it was notoriously a closed shop town. much to the shi grin of business interest. you had to be a member of a union, as a condition of employment. right? so lots of folks business interest in the city kind of hoped for the opposite. they hoped san francisco would have been an open shop town. it really demonstrated the power of union. unions were important to san francisco. no question about it. in fact labor had flexed its muscles a number of times in san francisco. a number of famous strikes a streetcar strike against the united railroad around 1907. another one against the pacific gas company in 1913. and so union activism was a tradition in san francisco as it was elsewhere. but certainly this bombing and this connection to labor seemed to be one that was apparent. it seemed to be an important connection. authorities wonder gist how. but it certainly mattered in

some ways for sure. this act as it was called in the press, many people started to suspect might have just ties to labor and particularly radical laborers. right the people who had been on the front lines of the strikes and activity. and all of those kinds of things. so this was part of the longer american history since chicago, and 1880s of this tenuous relationship. the fights had played out in newspapers, and mines, in a number of places. the ballot box. and sometimes as you saw, the streets. this was a tenuous relationship and the country seemed particularly because of capital, labor and workers and business interest, very much at odds. that's safe to say. the other thing i'll tell you about san francisco in 1916, this image maybe doesn't have a lot to do with it. we don't have a lot of images of the groups. you should know for maybe

obvious reasons, there was a very vibrant and very alife anarchi anarchist community. you have labor forces and anarchist. holding meetings, they were advertising in local newspapers. you could come to meetings if you want. many held in german and italian. many were immigrants. they had newspapers, and they were often high profile groups. in san francisco. one was called volonta. people knew about it in a way we probably wouldn't identify with anarchism in a public way now. in san francisco it was different in 1916. these were public and active groups. you had the anarchist element as well. let me say one more thick about it. maybe you have conceptions about an karkism as bomb throwers.

these were folks since the french revolution were very interested and concerned about state power. so they were interested in governments that had too much power. so it was really an ideology reacting to that. there were certain anarchist who believe in propaganda by the deed or of the deed. meaning that if you have one specific kind of attack, it could prove a spark. against the state, inspire other radicals and so on. you saw with the parade baby this was a moment of one of the deeds, perhaps. if we're still talking about labor and capital and dissent during the war, you should know that world war i 1 happening. it breaks out in 19d 14. the united states doesn't get involved until 1917. so it's a war that had been a long and bloody fight in europe. and united states had not participated. you should know that this

broader american movement of preparedness though, gained a lot of traction. it gained a lot after steam. in other words the thinking was, if you look at the thinking and the other world events that seem to demonstrate the way the germans for example were using unrestricted submarine war fair. it's possible the united states might get drawn into the war. so the united states and many leaders in particular started to have the attitude we better be ready for war. the size of the u.s. army was woefully behind. we needed a bigger arm and we needed better equipped army as well. just in case war happened. there were lot offense national figures who led the fight for preparedness. which becomes the movement. teddy roosevelt. wood row wilson, so you had all the kind of figures. secretaries of war and former generals saying we are way behind militarily. if the war drags the united

states in we better be ready. we better be prepared. this notion of preparedness catches on. parades like the one we started with today, and the focus for today in san francisco, was a phenomenon that happened all over. in other words how local communities demonstrated preparedness was part of this exercise. in other words having a parade that might demonstrate that community's patriotism, and sort of fur ver for the war. this is the preparedness day parade in washington d.c. you can see the capitol in the far distance. these happened all over. particularly in the summer of 1916. kansas city has a parade. seattle. the biggest one up to this point as you might imagine was in washington dc. you can see it playing out here. let me say a couple thing it is happened on june 14, 1916. so a little over a month before

the one in san francisco. this was an estimated crowd of about 60,000. men, women and children. papers billed it the most remarkable patriotic spectacle. the president of the united states by his order closed all of the federal offices that day. so folks could attend. in the parade you had members of congress, you had women suffrage advocates. boy scouts. you had all kinds participating and again the president at the time hoped that this would happen. at the very front of the parade, was president wilson. this is him after he had led the parade. he goes to a viewing stand and the parade could come by. he marched in front of the parade. at the front. a big straw hat on.

an american flag over his shoulder and everybody was cheering in the droud and so on. he made his way to the grand stand to review the parade at the end. at one point there were a bumpk bunch of handlers who released several hundred carrier pigeons into the air to send the message of preparedness all over the capitol. these pigeons were sent out as a display of perhaps of patriotism and so on. so pro pairedness i hope i'm convincing you is alive and well. it is an important moment. world war i is looming and how the united states might handle that is interesting. part of the preparedness cycle was the fact it wasn't a unanimous amount of support for preparedness. not everybody was on board. that's for sure. in in fact there was great criticism about wor war 1 from different forces. as you might imagine criticism particularly comes of world war

i from people that were among the labor class, working class americans and also people on the american left. politically left. socialist, certainly anarchist and others would have been opposed to the war. for lots of reasons. if you have read marks it nor classes and so on, you know of course all wars are capitalist wars and who benefits from war. finan finance. he said the man tra war is the health of the state. he was a critic. who benefits. certainly not the american workers who would be doing the fighting. the real devisive issue about the war was certainly surrounding whether or not the u.s. should get involved. it was really about conscription. about a draft. we didn't have draft in the united states. but there was a selective service act that started to get debated and eventually signed into law in 1917.

because remember our army is woefully small. it means, those of you who are young men in the class know when you turn 18 you get the select i have service card. and you have to register. for the draft. if you don't it's a crime. so we begin to see that process here. and there were many critics out spoken about who would be doing the fighting. rank and file, average americans. certainly not the kinds of people with means. there was a labor and left objection of course to the war generally. but especially to conscription. especially a draft and the idea of a draft. all throughout the united states there was a healthy dissent about war and the u.s. involvement in so on. in san francisco was no different. in fact on july 20, just two days before the bombing. at the dream land rink. of the fill more. about 4,000 unionists and war critics who showed up, two days before the bombing.

they show up at the venue to express their discontent about the possibility of war. and i'll give you another example on the very night of the bombing it didn't happen, but emma goldman a famous, that's a name that might mean something to some. a famous american anarchist was in san francisco when the bombing happened and that night as you can see from the slide, she was to give a lecture. and so for 25 cents you could go and hear emma goldman. this famous anarchist. radical of note. she was giving an address for 25 cents. the title of her talk as you soo here doesn't mince any words. can you see that. preparedness the road to universal slaughter. so it's making very clear what she thinks about preparedness and the possibility of what the draft and conscription will mean. universal slaughter. so goldman was in town during

the attack. let me share with you, too, one other ominous warning. that was to happen the night of the bombing. before the bombing in the few days before, the newspaper editors in san francisco all got an ominous letter the police chief did as well. i want to read with you read to you this warning letter that was sent to the editors. it's an important message. a few days that get this in mail at the local newspaper offices before the bombing. editors, are protest have been in vein in regards to the preparedness propaganda. we'll use direct action on the 22nd. which will echo around the earth and show that frisco really knows how. and that militarism cannot be forced on us and our children without a violent protest. things are going to happen. to show that we will go to any extreme the same as the controlling classes to preserve what little democracy we have. we don't take this as a joke,

and you should not or be truly awakened. awaken. we are sworn to our duty of the masses and only send warnings to those who are wise but forced to mar forced to march to hold their jobs as we only want to give the hypocritical patriots who somehow for war but never go to war, a little taste of war. if you read that statement, it is an ominous warning, but at the end of the day these are not the people who will do the fighting in the war, right? nobody knows where this ominous warning comes from, but it is delivered to these newspaper offices and the chief of police. of course, as we talked about at the beginning of today, true to their word, whoever wrote this -- or someone associated with that -- in fact held up their end of the bargain, right, and did the deed as we know. so that's kind of the first part i think in kind of thinking

about this and why it matters. it matters in terms of world war i and dissent and capital and labor and these kind much ominous warning. if you looked at that and listened carefully to the letter, it talks about the working classes and the ruling classes. it speaks to that divide that seems so endemic in the late 19th and early 20th century. let me talk second for a moment about how this mattered in terms of anti-immigrant especially and also anti-labor attitudes. after the bombing, right, the manhunt is immediately under way. it revealed a couple of things. one, it was very clear that the powers that be in the city were interested in striking a blow at radical labor, in other words cracking down on labor. using this as an opportunity, right, against the closed shop, for example, and against labor elements that had been so strong in the city. the other thing -- and i will give you a couple of example also of this in a second -- is

there was also a very much vibrant anti-immigrant attitude because those things seem to go hand in hand. the combination, of course, as you would imagine, came very quickly from the press. it was a das tarredly act as we know. the los angeles heard called it a diabolical crime in san francisco that disturbed the equilibrium of the entire state of california. the authorities acted quickly claiming they would find, and these are their words, the swarthy man responsible, and that seemed to have these undertones about who might have been responsible for this. they really started to focus their emphasis for the perpetrator on what they would have called lodging houses. they were kind of single-occupancy hotels, places where transient immigrant workers often might have moved through sometimes quickly san francisco. so this is where they were focusing their energy. you listen to that clearly, right, whoever committed this dastardly act was someone who

was swarthy, living in these transient immigrant housing situations, only the poorer parts of the city and so on. so it was clear it was targeted at a particular community for sure. residents were told in san francisco to remain vigilant as the manhunt was underway. a very agreeable press, of course, continued to talk in those terms and said that the authorities would get what they called a fanatic demon responsible for this, a fanatic demon. almost immediately, of course, blame fell on what were perceived as radicals. the san francisco mayor, james ross, declared all agitators will be driven from the city. again, so this anti-labor, anti-radical idea. one paper didn't hesitate to specify the source of the attack. "the iww anarchists and socialists have been very strong in denouncing the preparedness campaign and some of these people are no doubt responsible for this dastardly act," the

paper said. there was an immigrant in line with this attitude. his name was frank josephson who was arrested by the police. he was in a sailor's boarding house on drum street. all he could do according to the accounts is ex clan, "i didn't do it, i didn't do it" and he said it over and over again. he sat in the police station trembling and so on. the newspapers when josephson was arrested and even before said explicitly whoever committed the crime, clearly this was "the act of some foreigner." the act of some foreigner. so it is no surprise somebody like josephson, this finnish immigrant would be arrested and blamed. thankfully for him -- he was very nervous and scared -- the police admitted they had no connections between him and the bombing and let him go. i think it spoke to this attitude. in other words, we know who did this, it was clearly an immigrant. also implemented -- and i will

mention this quickly -- were two other people in san francisco at the time of the attack. one of this guy alexander be berkman. he tried to assassinate henry clay pitt, the pittsburgh steel mogul in the '90s. he goes to jail for this assassination attempt. he was proud of it and label it the first terrorist attack. he stabs him but he survives. berkman is living in san francisco in 1916. he is jewish, a radical, an anarchist so very much in line with these attitudes. he publishes, and i think you will catch the subtlety of the headline of the newspaper, he publishes a newspaper titled "the blast," which is, of

course, an anarchist newspaper. he is immediately catching suspicion. with him was his friend and on again, off again lover by the way, emma goldman, the same woman going to give the preparedness speech. so she's around san francisco at the time as well and they were very much in cahoots. to give you one example of kind of the anti-immigrant attitudes about berkman and goldman who were both jewish, that he were described as the kind of people who pop up as any radical movement that promise also financial return. also newspapers spoke of their "money-grabbing proclivity." in other words, right, this is a stereotype about jewish people, that somehow they're trying to profit from radicalism. again, anti-immigrant, anti-jewish, anti-semitic stuff here for sure. i think that anti-immigrant, anti-labor force is certainly important. let me finish with my third kind of why this matters idea. that's this kind of

anti-radicalism and this climate in some ways of the red scare and this broader kind can of miscarriage of justice, which i think you will find interesting as well. the district attorney was a guy by the name of charles fiker, a former football player. a big, hulking fellow with his own political ambition. he moved very quickly. he said, "in the interests of justice." so he was very interested in making quick arrests and finding the culprits very quickly. he's doing this in less than scrupulous ways, quick arrests without warrants, these kind of things, to bring someone to justice. it was also clear that thicker -- again, the district attorney -- wanted to strike a blow against radical labor. so this was part of his mission. he was working in cahoots with another guy by the name of martin swanson who was a former pinkerton detectives. if you know anything about the

pinkertons, right, they were this kind of -- before we had large bureau also of investigation and so on, they were this kind of auxiliary hired police force that lots of companies and others -- you know the story of the molly maguires, for example, you kind of know the pinkertons and their stories. so swanson was a former pinkerton man who worked against san francisco labor elements during earlier strikes. he is brought in by the district attorney. the district attorney asked him, i need a list of all of the labor agitators in town on july 22nd, 1916, the day of the bombing, and that will be our list. so swanson draws up his kind of list of all of the people that have given him trouble in the past, and of the list there were five people who were former labor organizers or still labor organizers or deemed radicals who were in town on july 22nd, 1916. that's who they arrested. the group is as pictured here.

they're brought into the police station. they're identified as the five suspects. again, brought in purely because of that list drawn up by swanson. warren billings, who you can see second from the left there, was arrested. he was 22 years old. very young. very active in the shoemakers union, so he was an active union guy. you had edward noland on the far right there, also active in the machinists union, so he was a labor organizers as well. israel weinberg on the far left who was a bus driver and involved in some of those earlier strikes for jitney car drivers and so on, you can see here, the bus operators union. these were all young and active labor organizers. but of most interest to swanson and thicker were in the center here, tom moony and rena moony

as you see pictured here. particularly the young tom mooney. i don't know, he was 33. that still seems kind of young to me. tom mooney was a noted radical agitator in san francisco. had been involved in a number of strikes, lots of organizing in the previous altercations and so on. he had been a socialist. depends on how you -- you might define that, but he had traveled with eugene debbs at one point, the perennial socialist candidate for president aboard the train that took debbs all over the country. mooney was an active labor organizers certainly on the political left, no question about it. but he catches the real eye of the authorities, and his wife rena as well, who was active in organizing with him. she spent her days as a music teacher. she had a music studio in san

francisco. the authorities would call it a deny, which makes it sound more ominous, but she had a couple of pianos and she had music students. so mooney and his wife, but especially mooney really attracted the attention of the authorities. when they were arrested they were held in solitary confinement. they weren't allowed to talk to family or friends or legal counsel. the assistant d.a. told a local reporter that the suspects "ought to be hung without ceremony." in other words let's do this quick and let's have a fast conviction. on august 2nd, 1916 they were jointly charged with murder. this became an interesting part of kind of the legal story, but the authorities kind of considered them all part of the same conspiracy. so when one was tried evidence would be used against the other one and so on. it was very complex, right? and probably a little unfair.

i'll just tell you as the investigation got underway there was some problematic police work. there were macabre souvenir hunters who after the bombing had been constructed, there were bullets in it and pieces of metal also that were intended to be projectiles. they found a woman's watch hundreds of yards away from the blast, so it was a powerful bomb with all of these pieces of shrapnel and so on. so souvenir hunters took these items. the other problem for the police work as well, complicating things -- you can see the hole blast here -- is that the authorities came and they washed away all of the dust and all of the soot and all of that kind of stuff, which of course for police work is also a little bit of a problem in terms of finding valuable evidence and so on. the story of this and the trials that begin in 1916 and 1917 are

a very long and complex story that i could talk about with you more, but you should know that during the course of these legal proceedings -- and this is pretty well documented. it is not hard to dispute. there were doctored photographs. there was perjured testimony, meaning people lied under oath. there were all kind of other incriminating elements to the prosecution's case. mooney and billings in particular would both be convicted. billings convicted in december of 1916, mooney convicted february of 1917. so those are important dates to remember. 1916, 1917 these guys go to jail. now, you think about this, they're not going to have a very sympathetic public. this is in the age of the red scare. the attorney general, a. mitchell palmer, gets his front porch blown up by a bomb and of

course radicals are now hunted in the united states and so on. we get the espionage act and he is sedition act which limits speech which is open to interpretation. you couldn't mail critical pieces of things to newspapers, things like the international socialist review. "the blast" berkman's paper, you can't mail those things anymore because the government cracks down on all of that stuff by 1917 or 1918. there is, as you can imagine, a long series of appeals for their fight. they go to jail in 1916 and 1917. the legal fight lasts over 20 years. a series of governors review the case, each time they kind of come into office, and each time they kind of all realize it is a political hot potato. they refuse to give mooney a new trial and they refuse to exonerate him, to give him a

pardon. president wilson, woodrow wilson, even commissioned a special organization that came known as the wilson commission to investigate the case and come to some conclusions. their conclusions were basically that there had been some funny business with this trial, with some of these photos and some of the testimony and so on. since 1917, it always seemed to come out more and more, more revelations about so-and-so had told this story on the stand, that wasn't true. this happened with the evidence. that wasn't true. so there started to be more and more kind of revelations. in the meantime, mooney became this kind of cause celeb. he became famous as this martyr for american labor. he became a public figure. there was a huge defense fund and there's a continual fight made on his behalf for his exoneration. but, remember, this is a process that lasts 20-plus years. it wasn't until the morning hours of january 7th, 1939 --

let me say that again. jan 7th, 1939. remember, they went to jail in 1916 and 1917. but mooney, now 56 years old, is visited by the governor and mooney is taken to sacramento. the new governor was a guy by the name of colbert olson. it was broadcast nationally on the radio and he says, the governor says, i have signed and now hand to you, tom mooney, this final and unconditional pardon. and the crowd rang out. mooney, by the way, understood it was a fight for democracy and justice and he was sort of grinning with this happened. he was able to make a statement, and he kind of framed it in the kind of context of decay in the world. he was kind of thinking about what was happening in germany at the time and how much justice really mattered. just to put this again in perspective, this is mooney when he gets out of jail.

that was moone when he went in. so those are powerful photos. let me finish with this. i think that we know this is a gross miss appropriation of justice. it is pretty clear that this was a wrongful conviction, and having looked at the evidence it is not very definitive at all that mooney had anything to do with it. in fact, he probably had nothing to do with it. i will say more about that in a second. some have made lots of inferences about the kind of who-done-it question. in other words who did the attack, who did the bombing? one name was bandied about, a guy by the name of selst selston eckland who was a san francisco anarchist. he would later blow up a church in the 1920s, so there was a theory that he was responsible, but it was squashed as well. there was an anarchist famous at the time who was an italian who came to the united states and

had all kind of followers in the united states. he remained coy in his last dates. he was deported from the united states and questioned in boston harbor not far from here before he left, and the bureau of investigations asked him all kind of questions and if he knew anything and he remained coy and denied mooney's guilt when he was deported. there were a couple of books that came out -- and this is another image just of the parade to -- as we kind of think about the who-done-it question. there were a couple of books that came out in the 1960s, one by richard frost, another by curt gentry, and they both advanced the kind of german sabotage theory. in other words that the germans during war hoped actually to create an explosion, you know, on the waterfront in san francisco. they were going to blow up some munitions and these kind of things, and so it was part of a broader plot by the germans to create this kind of disorder in the united states. so that's another theory. that's a very attractive

hypothesis for some folks. then there's a very recent book about alexander berkman and emma goldman called sasha and emma. that was their nicknames, sasha was his nickname. that they somehow had a role in all of this perhaps or possibly, an more likely, that group valanta that i was talking about, that anarchist group in san francisco, that they had something to do with it, but all of it is speculation. i think all of this certainty about the perpetrator is kind of eager having looked at all of the sources. now as the 100 year anniversary has come and gone of the attack, the only consensus seems to be there isn't consensus. the other consensus is that clearly mooney and billings did not plant that bomb. but perhaps the who-done-it question is not as significant as this broader story of why this mattered. as i kind of outlined in my three parts for you today, what this event kind of tells us, the san francisco bombing became

known as the mooney case, the preparedness day bombing, stands as i think an underexplore pd and under appreciated mom ent i american history. something like this, all the way to saco and venzetti in 1920. the preparedness day bombing was not the first nor was it the last moment of radicalism in u.s. history, but i think it gives us a valuable lens into this much broader story. i will say this, too. i think the bombings and the attacks also give us during this period some ominous and intimate parallels with other and more recent acts of domestic terrorism. for example, the atlanta olympics in 1996, or when i was researching this very ominously the boston marathon bombing in 2013. shrouded in this debate were

questions of loyalty, anti-immigrant attitudes, this kind of rich/poor gap that seem to be exacerbated in the american experience and this fear of radicalism that could have, of course, disastrous results. as i mention, 100 years later, the anniversary has come and gone. it happened this past summer of the bombing. today san francisco residents and probably even more tourists walk by the bombing site not really kind of appreciating or maybe not taking notice of this important site, and why would they? there's no plaque, there's no memorial, nothing there that draws our attention to that moment. but i think this moment stands as one of the most important reminders of this turbulent relationship about labor and radicalism and immigrants and war during the late 19th and early 20th century. so i will stop there and answer any questions. do you have questions for me? surely you must. what are you left wondering about? we've got a few minutes.

if not, i'll stick around and answer questions, but if you've got a question. sure. >> they really have no idea who did it? >> huh-uh. i wish -- this is one of my great -- i wish i could tell you, but as i mentioned at the end there are many hypothesis and no definitive evidence. jenna, let this be a liesson to you. you can write a book about this and research this, but we don't know. it probably doesn't surprise you, right? espionage and what we might consider sabotage and those kind of things, it is not like whoever was responsible, whether they were anarchists or labor folks, they certainly weren't going to telegraph that. you know, they thought they had the five people, but then they started to doctor the evidence and so on. you know, they found bomb making materials and so on, and then they find out, well, it is not really bomb making materials but they were convinced it was. nobody really knows is the short

answer. yeah, other question? >> what happened to the district attorney? >> interesting question. he ran for office and actually won in california, and then there was a recall election against him and that failed. so he became a prominent citizen in california, and so he had his own kind of political ambitions. clearly he could kind of serve as the kind of candidate of business interests. of course, labor very much opposed him as a public official for sure. but he got his wish, charles ficker, for sure, and survived a recall election as well. good question. other questions? yeah, joey. >> did anything happen to the police department that arrested these five suspects and jailed? >> no. great question. no. you know, police work functions

in such a different way then that there wasn't like a censure, boy, you really gomt this one wrong or, boy, we're going to fire the police. in fact, ficker and others are an example this doesn't affect them at all. they continue their careers and run for other offices, become judges and these kind of things. so the short answer is no, there wasn't any formal -- we would think now there would be an investigation of the police, right? but police work when i was sort of digging into all of this, functioned very differently at the time. again, you had that kind of pinkerton element as well, which was kind of acting kind of quasi independently. it was a very different time for police work. good question. these are all good questions. think we're out of time, but i will see you all tomorrow morning and we'll continue our work. we'll have some presentations on friday i think, and then we'll talk more about the housekeeping things then. thanks so much for coming.

i'll stick around and answer any questions you might have. thanks for coming. american history tv is in prime time all this week with our original series "lectures in history" focusing on college and university classrooms around the country. on thursday we'll take a look at the 1950s, including a cold war educational film and 1950s american culture. american history tv in prime time begins at 8:00 p.m. eastern. also coming up thursday, book tv in prime time looks at authors who are on the summer reading list for members of congress. john meachem. historian blanche wiesencook on her book, "eleanor roosevelt." discusses the craft of writing

in "do i make myself clear." book tv all this week in prime time on c-span 2. sunday night on "after words." talk raid wrote host mark levin on the expansion of the federal government and what the country must do to move back to what the founders intended in his book "rediscovering americanism." he is interviewed by former south carolina senator jim de mint. >> have we reached the point where we can't get back? have we overwhelmed in the culture, in politics, in the media with this progressivism notion, centralized government, a phoney egalitarianism, of the smothering of individualism? has it become so entrenched in our institution that there's no way to rip it out? i say yes. we have to do everything we can to confront it, to debate it, to

explain to our fellow citizens what's taking place. we simply have no choice. >> watch "after words" sunday night at 9:00 eastern on c-span 2's book tv. when you think about a one day festival, the national book festival and you have over 100 authors from children's authors, illustrators, graphic novelists, all of these different authors there all day, over 100,000 people come in and celebrate books and reading. you can't have a better time i think. i'm a little prejudiced because i'm a librarian, but i have to tell you any reader or anybody that wants to get inspired, the book festival is the perfect place. >> book tv's live all-day coverage begins saturday at 10:00 a.m. with featured authors including pulitzer prize winning authors david mccullough and thomas freedman, former

secretary of state condoleezza rice and best selling authors, michael lewis and j.d. vance. the national book festival, live saturday starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span 2's book tv. up next, university of minnesota professor erika lee talks about asian immigration to the west coast from 1830 to 1930, including the role of san francisco bay's angel island in the 20th century. she compares the angel island and ellis island experiences, describing how asian immigrants in california had more extensive background checks and longer holding times than european immigrants in new york. the class is about 90 minutes. >> well, hello, guys. welcome back. i'm really excited to talk to you today for our session this afternoon because so many of us as americans, we grow up learning about the history of immigration through ellis island, right? this is what we tald