instead we're paying for celebration and legacy building. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on cspan's q & a. >> and now providence college professor jeffrey johnson teaches a class about the 1916 bombing of a parade in san francisco. the bombing took place on what's called preparedness day, organized by provigilance groups. it 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 the early 20th century.

it holds a lot of significance in this period of the guilded age and the progressive era. it also happens to be the subject of my new book so i've been living and breathing in this period and in this moment which again i think is very, very significant for 1916 or for the nation, in ways i will try to make clear. so what i'll do today is kind of start by setting up the context of san francisco in 1916, during this moment, during this sunshine, and then i'll spend some time in really three parts talking about why it's significant and why it's important to american history and our story. but let me begin by kind of 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, but one of them that he said is the coldest winter i ever spend was a summer in san francisco.

this is one of his jokes. if you have ever been to san francisco, you know this sometimes to be true. he said this reportedly about the bay city. july 1916, though, seemed a little different. the air was pretty mild, the summer weather had turned very fair and pleasant, the local weather forecaster by the name of t.r. reed who wrote for the san francisco chronicle predicted only a light wind for july 22nd, 1916. so it had settled into a very pleasant summer. and there was a great deal of excitement surrounding the city that july. for lots of reasons, but san francisco in many ways was a far cry from the city that it had been with the famous san francisco earthquake a decade earlier. this was a famous moment in 1906 that many of you have probably heard of and the city had kind of rebuilt itself since 1906 and in the previous decade, so much so that the city had just had a world's fair and hosted one in 1915 as a kind of celebration of this revitalized city.

and there were lots of other things happening in the city, you can see here this gentleman, this is charles evans hughes, he was a judge who was also running for president in 1916, so he came to san francisco and he promised republican party loyalists that he would win by an overwhelming majority, his words. if you have not heard of president hughes that's probably because he didn't win by an overwhelming majority, but he visited the city that summer as part of his campaign. another moment that happened around this weekend of july 22nd 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. so this was a city that had really arrived, this these 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 previous histories as a labor city that had a little bit of ferment, a little bit of unrest, except 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 22nd, 1916, if we can kind of talk just about this saturday, there was a woman by the name of mrs. cecil wymore 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 4 and billy age 2. they left their 53rd avenue home in oakland to go across the ba i to san francisco really in a trip that was about the children. they were going to san francisco so that 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, by 1914 in europe war had been raging, world war i was very much under way, and the united states with involvement in the war a real possibility started to have parades like this as a show of kind 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 that about 50,000 people would show up and witness this parade including the wymore family and it seemed to kind of symbolize this 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, this he could buy at local

markets and shops and so on flags and buttons and banners and these kinds of things to demonstrate their patriotism. the san francisco chronicle as people prepared and bought all of these things even published the parade route, up market street from the famous ferry building which is still an iconic building in san francisco and then it would turn went on to van ness street. there was a lot of anticipation about the parade in san francisco and it's no wonder that this family went downtown. when the parade began and when it started here is a shot of what the parade looked like, this was market street, so you get a sense here of what this may have looked like. the official count said that there were 51,319 people in attendance to see this parade. again, this kind of patriotic world war i parade. 52 bands participated and about 2,134 different groups, as you see here, soldiers, national gua guard, many of them veterans

from the spanish american war, nurses groups, boy scouts, you name it. curiously, though, no labor groups. no unions. no working class folks. they purposefully chose to boycott the event to kind of send a message about what this display might have meant to them. well, one oregon newspaper called the san francisco preparedness day parade the greatest demonstration in support of a national movement that the west had ever seen. so here was this outpouring for this moment. well, once in the city the wymores grabbed a spot along market street, all four of them. by this point as you see here jammed shoulder to shoulder with these 50,000 plus onlookers. well, what happened next just after 2:00 p.m., about a half an 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, mrs. wymore had him up to get a better look at this

parade, a bomb exploded. and it instantly took off both of her legs, this young 26-year-old mother. surgeons quickly scrambled to help mrs. wymore, 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 miraculously survived the attack. so it was an overwhelmingly kind of festive and sunny day that had turned inexplicably dark. well, the blast ultimately will kill ten parade goers that day including of course mrs. wymore. and shrapnel would wound about another 40 people that had been witnessing the parade. so the tragedy i think that struck the wymore family and many others at 2:06 p.m. on july

22nd, 1916, stands as an underappreciated and yet critical point in american history. taken on the whole i think it marked 30 years, kind of a book ends of trouble between capital and labor. it also showed how the nation might respond to such an unsettling event. particularly how a nation might deal with discontented 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. so this was a decisive event for one summer and perhaps longer that turns the nation's attention on san francisco and the nation as we teetered on the edge of war. >> so we know a lot about labor violence and we know a lot about conflict during the gilded age and progressive era for sure, but 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 anti-radicalism seemed to intertwine during a time of dissent. so i want to talk about why this matters really in three parts today and take this wymore story and this real tragedy and how we might kind of make sense of it. i will give you a few reasons for -- or frame works for how i will talk about this. the first theme i think and why this is so important is that 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. that is objections to the war. secondly the aftermath of the parade and the bombing also revealed some very serious and stark anti-immigrant attitudes. sometimes they would be rolled

into anti-radical attitudes as well, but during a time of war the nation really had to kind of grapple with radicalism and that segment of the population. and finally as you will 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 this country. so let me take up that first point and kind of talk about this relationship between capital and labor and this reaction to the government and criticism of war as this patriotism at least superficially seemed to take route. san francisco is an interesting kind of labor city, i've got a picture here, this is, of course, more than a decade before the bombing but these are dock workers in san francisco. and san francisco in many ways

replicated or paralleled the way that labor kind of functioned in the country at the time. you could expect if you were a worker in the early 20th century to work long days for low wages and often in dangerous conditions, depending on your occupation. so this was a real time of reform and activism by unions and others to bring greater rights, fairer wages, safer working conditions, all of those things to workers. san francisco was very much a part of that. now, it was notoriously a closed shop town, much to the chagrin of business interests. what that meant was that you had to be a member of a union, right, as a condition of employment. right? so lots of folks, business interest in the city kind of hoped for the opposite. they would have hoped that san francisco would have been an open shop town because it really demonstrated the power of unions. so unions were really important to san francisco, no question about it and, in fact, labor had flexed its muscles a number of times in san francisco.

there had been a number of famous strikes, there was a streetcar strike against the united railroads, there was another one against the pacific gas company in 1913. 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 and authorities would wonder just how, but it certainly mattered in some ways for sure. this dastardly 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 these strikes and activities and all of those kinds of things. so this was part of this longer american history since chicago and hay market in the 1880s of this tenuous relationship and these fights. san francisco and across the country had played out in newspapers, in minds, in a number of places, the ballot box

and sometimes, as you saw, the streets. so this was a tenuous relationship and the country seemed particularly because of capital and labor and workers and business interests very much at odds. i think that's safe to say. the other thing i will tell you about san francisco in 1916 -- and this image maybe doesn't have a lot to do with it because we just don't have a lot of images of these groups, but you should also know for maybe obvious reasons that there was a very vibrant and very alive anarchist community in san francisco as well. so you kind of had these labor forces and then you also had anarchists in the city. they were holding meetings, they were advertising in local newspapers, you could come to their meetings if you want, many of them held in german or italian because many of the anarchists who came to the country were immigrants. they had newspapers. and they were often high profile groups in san francisco. one of them was called volonta.

so people knew about it in a way that probably we wouldn't identify with an arcism in a very public way now, in san francisco it was different in 1916, these were very public and active groups. so you had this kind of anarchist element as well. you have maybe conceptions about an arcism as bomb throwers and so on. these were folks that since the days of the french revolution which you've learned about in your other classes were very interested and concerned about des pod dig state power. so they were interested in governments that had too much power. so it was really an ideology that was reacting to that. and there were certain anarchists hobbled in something called propaganda by the deed or propaganda of the deed, depending on how you translated it from the french, meaning that if you have one specific kind of attack, it could prove a kind of spark, right, against the state, inspire other radicals and so on. so you saw with this parade maybe, right, this was kind of a

moment of one of these deeds perhaps. so if we're still kind of talking about labor and capital and dissent during the war, you should also know that world war i is happening. of course, it breaks out in 1914 and the united states doesn't get involved in world war i until 1917. so it's a war that had been a long and bloody fight in europe and the 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 of steam. in other words, the thinking was -- and if you looked at the louis tan i can't sinking and there were other kind of world events that seems to demonstrate the way the germans, for example, were using unrestricted submarine warfare it's possible that the united states might get drawn into this war. so the united states and many leaders in particular started to have the attitude that we better be ready for war. the size of the u.s. army was woefully behind, so we needed a bigger army and we needed a better equipped army as well

just in case war happens. and there were lots of national figures who kind of led the fight for preparedness which becomes this movement, preparedness, right, this was a preparedness day parade. teddy roosevelt, oliho root, woodrow wilson. so you had all these kind of figures, former secretaries of war, former generals and so on saying we are way behind mill tear i will and if this war drags the united states in we better be ready. so this notion of preparedness catches on for sure. 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 their preparedness was part of this exercise. in other words, having a parade that might demonstrate that community's patriotism and sort of fervor for the war. i will give you a few examples.

this is the preparedness day parade that happens in washington, d.c., obviously you can see the capitol, that may be in the far distance there so you can make some sense of that, but these happened all over, particularly in the summer of 1916. kansas city had a preparedness day parade, seattle had a preparedness day parade. okay. the biggest one up to this point, though, as you might imagine was in washington, d.c. and you can see it playing out here. let me just say a couple things about it. it happened on june 14th, 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 in the capital we have ever seen and you can kind of get a sense of this patriotism being displayed. the president of the united states by his order closed all of the federal offices that day so folks could attend. so in the parade you had members of congress, you had women suffrage advocates marching, you

had boy scouts, you had all kind of dignitaries participating and again the president at the time hoped that this would happen. at the very front of the parade was president woodrow wilson. now, this was him after he had kind of led the parade because then he goes to a viewing stand and then the parade could come by. but he marched at the front of the parade, he had a big strong hat on, he had an american flag over his shoulder and everybody was kind of cheering in the crowd and so on. eventually he made his way to this grandstand to review the parade at the end. at one point there were a bunch of handlers who released several hundred carrier pigeons into the air to in their words send the message of preparedness all over the capital. they probably sent a lot more all over the capital, too, but these pigeons were sent out as this kind of display perhaps of patriotism and so on. so preparedness, i hope i'm

convincing you is alive and well. world war i is looming and how the united states might handle that is interesting. well, part of the preparedness cycle was the fact that it wasn't a unanimous amount of support for preparedness. in other words, not everybody was on board for preparedness. that's for sure. in fact, there was great criticism about world war i from lots of different forces. as you might imagine criticism particularly comes of world war i from people that were among the labor class, working class americans, right, and also people on the american left. right? politically left. socialists, right, certainly anarchists and others would have been really opposed to the war, for lots of reasons. if you've read any marks for any of your classes and so on you know that all wars are capitalist wars and who benefits from war, right, financiers and those that are running the war operations and so on. randolph born was a famous social critic at the time he said this mantra that war is the

health of the state. he was a critic of the war. so who benefits? certainly not the rank and file american workers who would be doing the fighting. right? well, the real divisive issue about the war was certainly surrounding whether or not the u.s. should get involved in the war but it was really about conscription, it was about a draft. we didn't have a draft in the united states, but there was a selective service act that started to get debated and eventually was signed into law in 1917. remember, our army is woefully small, right, so it means, right -- and those of you that are young men in this class know when you turn 18 you get that selective service card and you have to register for the draft. if you don't it's a crime. right? so we begin to see that process here and there were many critics outspoken about just who would be doing the fighting, rank and file, average americans. certainly not the kinds of people are means. so there was this kind of labor and leftish objections, of course, to the war generally but

especially to conscription, especially to a draft and the idea of a draft. so all throughout the united states there was a kind of healthy dissent about war and the u.s. involved and so on and san francisco was no different. in fact, on july 20th, just two days before the bombing, at the dream land rink which was the fill more there were about 4,000 unionists and war critics who showed up, this was two days before the bombing in san francisco, they show up at this venue to express their discontent about the possibility of war. i will give you another example, on the very night of the bombing, it didn't happen, but emma goldman who was a famous -- that's a name that maybe might mean something to some of you, a famous american anarchist was in san francisco when the bombing happened and that night as you can see from this slide she was to give a lecture. so for 25 cents you could go and hear emma goldman this famous

anarchist, this famous radical of note, she was going to give this address, again, for 25 cents. the title of her talk as you see here doesn't mince any words. it says, 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. right. so goldman was in town during the attack. let me share with you, too, one other ominous warning. so that was to happen the night of the bombing. before the bombing in the few days before the newspaper editors in it 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 these editors because i think it's an important message. again, this was a few days they get this in the mail at the local newspaper offices before the bombing. editors, our protests have been

in vain in regards to this preparedness propaganda so we're going to use a little 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 still have. we don't take this as a joke and you shouldn't or be truly awakened. awaken awakened. we are sworn to our duty of the masses and only send warnings to those who are wise, but who are forced to march to hold their jobs as we want to give only the hypocritical patriots who shout for war but never go to war a real taste of war. right. so if you read that statement and you think about it, it's an ominous warning and it's playing, right, on the fact that these are people that are shouting for war very patriotic

clee but at the end of the day these aren't the people who will do the fighting in the war. so nobody knows where this ominous warning comes from, but it's delivered to these newspaper offices and the chief of police. well, 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 thinking about this and why it matters. it matters in terms of world war i and dissent and capital and labor and these ominous warning signs. if you looked at that and listened carefully to that letter it talks about the working classes and ruling classes so it kind of 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 because after the bombing, right, the manhunt is

immediately under way. and it revealed a couple 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. and the other thing -- and i will give you a couple examples of this in just a second -- is there was also very much a vibrant anti-immigrant attitude because those things seemed to go hand in hand. the condemnation of course as you would imagine came very quickly from the press. this was a very dastardly act as we know. the los angeles herald called it a diabolical crime in san francisco and it has disturbed the equilibrium of the entire state of california they said. the authorities acted quickly, claiming that they would find -- and these are their words -- the swarty man responsible and that seemed to have these kinds of

undertones about who might have been responsible for this. and they really started to focus their emphasis for the perpetrator on what they would have called lodging houses, they were really 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. if you listen to that clearly, right, whoever commit this had dastardly act was somebody that was swarty, leaving in these transient often immigrant housing situations, often the poorer parts of the city and so on. so it was clear that it was targeted at a particular community for sure. residents were told in san francisco to remain vigilant as the manhunt was under way. 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 rolf 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, quote, 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. well, there was one finish immigrant, his name was frank josephson who got arrested by the police, he was in the boarding house that he lived in, it was on drum street. all he could do according to the newspaper accounts is kind of ex claim i didn't do t i didn't do it and he sort of said that over and over again and he sat in the police station trembling and so on. and the newspapers when josephson was arrested and even before had ex plitly said that whoever committed the crime

clearly this was the act of some foreigner. the act of some foreigner. it's no surprise that somebody like josephson this finish immigrant would be nabbed and arrested and blamed. thankfully for josephson he was nervous and scared, the police admitted he had no connections between him and bombing and let him go, but i think it spoke to this attitude. in other words, we know who did this, it was clearly an immigrant. also implicated and i will mention this quickly were two other people who were in san francisco at the time of the attack, one of them is this guy alexander burkeman, if that's a name that means anything to you, you had tried to assassinate henry clay frick, the famous pittsburgh steel mogul in the 1890s. he goes to yale for the assassination attempt for over a decade. bushingman was very proud of this. he labeled it the first terrorist act in american history. he doesn't actually kill frick, but he tries and stabs him, but

frick survives. but bushingman was living in san francisco in 1916. he's an immigrant, he's jewish, he had a radical, he is an anarchi anarchist. he also publishes and i think you will catch the subtly of the headline of the newspaper, he publishes a newspaper titled the blast. which of course is an anarchist newspaper. so he's immediately catching some suspicion. with him was his friend and on again/off again lover, by the way, emma goldman, the same woman who was going to give that preparedness -- the road to universal slaughter speech. so she's around san francisco at the time as well and they were very much in cahoots. just to give you one example of kind of the anti-immigrant attitudes about burkeman and goldman who were both jewish, they were described as the kind of people who popped up at any radical movement that promises financial returns and also

newspapers spoke of their, quote, money grabbing pro clifts. in other words, right, this is a stereotype about jewish people that they are just trying to profit from radicalism. again, anti-immigrant, anti-jewish, anti-semitic stuff here for sure. so i think that kind of anti-immigrant, anti-labor courses is certainly important. let me finish with my third kind of why this matters idea. and that's this kind of anti-radicalism and this climate in some ways of the red scare and this broader kind of miscarriage of justice which i think you will find interesting as well. the district attorney was a guy by the name of charles fickert, this big hulking fellow that had his own political ambitions moved very quickly. he said, quote, in the interest of justice. he was very interested in making quick arrests and finding the

culprits very quickly. he's doing this in less than scrupulous ways. it was also clear that fickert, 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 detective. if you know anything about the pinkertons, right, they were this kind of before we had large bureaus of investigation and so on, but they were this kind of auxiliary hired police force that lots of companies and others if you know the story the molly mcguires, for example, you kind of know the pinkertons and their story. swanson was a former pinkerton man who had worked against san francisco labor elements during earlier strikes. he's brought in by the district attorney, the district attorney asks him, i need a list of all the labor agitators who were in town on july 22nd, 1916, right, the day of the bombing, and that

will be our list. so swanson draws up his kind of list of all the people that had 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. and 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, and, again, brought in purely because of that list drawn up by swanson. warren billings who you can kind of see second from the left there was arrested, he was 22 years old, very young, very active in the shoe maker's union so he was an active union guy. you had edward nolan on the far right there, also active in the machinists union, so he was a

labor organizer as well. israel wine berg 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 in the bus operator's union. these were all young and active labor organizers, but of most interest to swanson and fickert were in the center here, tom mooney and reena mooney as you see pictured here, particularly the young tom mooney. young, i don't know, he was 33, that still seems kind of young to me. but tom mooney was a noted kind of radical agitator in san francisco, had been involved in a number of strikes, lots of organizing in those previous altercations and so on. he had been a socialist, depends on how you might define that, but he had traveled with eugene debs at one point, the famous

perennial socialist candidate for president aboard the red special which was the train that took debs all all over the country. mooner was an active labor organizer certainly on the political left, no question about t but he catches the real eye of the authorities and his wife reena 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 den which makes it sound more ominous, but she had a couple mean knows 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. and the assistant d.a. told a local reporters that the suspects, quote, 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. and 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. well, i will just tell you as the investigation got under way there was some problematic police work, there were mccab souvenir hunters who after the bombing showed up and the bomb had been constructed so it had bullets in it as well as pieces of metal and so on intended to be projectiles and so on, they found a woman's watch hundreds of yards away from the blast. so it was a really powerful bomb, but with all these kinds of pieces of shrapnel and so on. so souvenir hunters kind of took this stuff as something, but of

course that matters for the police work. the other problem with the police work as well complicating things, you can see the -- the whole blast here, is that the authorities came and they washed away all the dust and all 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's not hard to dispute, there were doctored photographs, there was perjured testimony meaning people lied under oath and there were all kinds of other incriminating elements to the prosecution's case, and mooney and billings in collateral will 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, if you think about this they're not going to have a very sympathetic public, this was in the age of the red scare, attorney general gets his front porch blown up by a bomb and radicals are hunted in the united states and so on. we get the ease mean nash and sedition act as well which limit disloyal speech which is open to interpretation. also you couldn't mail socialist and other critical kinds of pieces of writing and newspapers and those kinds of things. things like the international socialist review just stop being mailed. the blast as well, burke man's paper you can't mail those things anymore. 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.

so they go to jail 1916 and 1917. the fight, 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 that it's a political hot potato and 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, it became known as the wilson commission, to investigate the case and come to some conclusions and 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, and 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 very famous has this martyr for american labor. there was a huge defense fund and there is this 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, january 7th, 1939, remember, they went to jail in 1916 and 1917 -- that 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 olsen. it was broadcast nationally on the radio and he says the governor says i sign and will hand to you, tom mooney, this

final and unconditional pardon and the crowd rang out. mooney stood this was a fight for democracy and justice and he was grinning when this happened and he was able to make a statement and he kind of framed it in the kind of context of decay in the world and he was kind of thinking about what was happening in germany at the time and how much justice really mattered. but just to put this again in perspective, this is mooney when he gets out of jail, and that was mooney when he went in. i think those are powerful photos. well, let me finish with this, i think that we know that this is a gross misappropriation of justice. it is pretty clear that this is a wrongful conviction and having looked at the evidence it's not very definitive at all that mooney had anything to do with it, he probably had nothing to do with it. some have made lots of inferences about the who done it question, in other words, who did the attack and bombing.

there was one name bandied about, a guy by the name of selston england, he will later blow up a church in the 1920s. there was a theory maybe he might have been responsible, but that's been sort of squashed as well. there was an anarchist who was very famous at the time by the name of luigi galiani who was an italian and had come to the united states and had all kinds of followers in the united states. he remained very coy, each in his last days. he was deported from the united states, actually questioned in boston harbor before he left not far from here and the bureau of investigation asked him all kinds of questions, if he knew anything and he just remained very coy and just dee noid 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 as we kind of think about the two done it question. there were a couple of books that came out in the 1960s, one

by richard frost, another by kurt gentry and they both advanced the german sabotage theory. in other words, that the germans during war, right, had hoped actually to create an explosion, you know, in the waterfront, in san francisco, they were going to blow up some munitions and these kinds of things. this was part of a broader plot by the germans to create this kind of disorder in the united states. so that's another theory theory, that's another attractive hypothesis by those folks. there is a book about alexand alexanderbushing man and emma goldman that they somehow had a role in all of this perhaps or possibly and more likely that ground volanta i was talking about, maybe they had something to do with it, but all of it is kind of speculation. i think any of this kind of certainty about the perpetrator is kind of eager having looked at all of the sources. and now is the 100 year

anniversary has come and gone of the attack the only consensus seems to be that there isn't consensus and 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 matters. as i kind of outlined in my three parts for you today, what this event tells us, the san francisco bombing where it became known as the mooney case, the preparedness day bombing stands as an underexplored and underappreciated moment in american history. it's this high point for american radicalism between hay market and maybe the 1920s or the l.a. times bombing in the 1910s, something like this all the way to socco and vanzetti 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 research 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 seemed to be exacerbated in the american experience and this fear of radicalism that could have, of course, disastrous results. as i mentioned 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, there's 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 the early 20th century. so i'll 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 will stick around and answer questions, but if you have a question. >> so they really have no idea who did it? >> huh-uh. i wish -- this is one of migrate -- i wish i could tell you, but as i mentioned at the end there are many hypotheses and there is no definitive evidence. so jenna, let this be a lesson to you, you can write a book about this and come up and research this and find out who is it it but we don't know. it probably doesn't surprise you, espionage and what we might

consider sabotage and those kinds of things, it's not like whoever was responsible whether they were anarchists or labor folks, they certainly weren't going to telegraph that. they thought they had the five people but then they started to doctor the evidence and so on they found bomb making materials and so on and found out it's not bomb making materials, nobody really knows is the short answer. yeah. other questions. >> 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 and clearly he could kind of serve as the kind of candidate of business interests and of course labor very much opposed

him as a public official for sure, but he got his wish, charles fickert, for sure, and survived a recall election as well. good question. others questions? thanks, molly. yeah, joey. >> did anything happen to the police department that arrested the five suspects and then jailed? >> no. that's a great question. no. you know, police work functions in such a different way then that there wasn't like a censure, boy, you really got this one wrong or we're going to fire the chief of police. fickert and others are great examples that this doesn't affect them at all, they continue their careers and run for other offices and becomes judges and all of this kinds 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, but police work when i sort of digging into all of this just functioned very differently at the time and, again, you also

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. i think we're out of time, but i will see you all tomorrow morning and we will continue our work. and we will have some presentations on friday, i think, and those kinds of things, we will talk more about the housekeeping things, then. thanks so much for coming, i will stick around and answer any questions that you might have. okay? cool. thanks for coming. all this week while congress continues to be out for their august recess american history tv is in prime time with our original series, lectures in history. tonight we take you into classrooms across the country for a look at the 1950s. join us at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span 3. congress returns from its summer recess next week to work on

federal spending which will also include hurricane harvey response, raising the debt ceiling and tax reform. here is a little of what you can expect this fall. >> i'd like to know which of these principles the majority leader does not agree with. i'd like to know. is he closing the door on bipartisanship because he so clearly wants to cut taxes on the top 1%, the wealthy are doing great right now, god bless them. but they don't need another tax break while middle class families and working americans are struggling just to make ends meet. and many of us on this side of the aisle suspect that to some that's the number one motivation, not tax reform, not closed loopholes, not clean up the system, but give that top 1% a huge tax break. >> today we commit to a new tax code written for a new era of

american excellence and prosperity. with the american people we can cut all of these loopholes out. we can lower the tax rates for every family, for every business, for every neighborhood in american and we can vault america from nearly dead last in the world back into that lead pack is the best place on the planet for that next new job, that next new plant, that next new technology. and together working with president trump, congress and the american people, you know, i'm confident we can meet this challenge. we can rise to this challenge just as our nation has risen, too, and prevailed over so many challenges before in our history. >> we'll have a complete rundown of the issues congress looks to

address this fall tonight. that's at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-spa c-span. >> labor day on c-span at 6:45 p.m. eastern former president obama accepts the annual jfk profile in courage award. at 8:00 columnist and national review senior editor jonah goldberg. >> conservatives should not place all of their hopes in any politician. go back and read the founders, read the federalist papers, they say this over and over and over again, that you should have a healthy distrust of any political leader, sometimes particularly the ones that claim to be speaking for you. >> and then at 9:00 p.m. eastern university of southern california professor diane winston. >> six corporations own much of the american news media and the digital revolution has meaning while transformed the economy. networks and daily newspapers no longer set our national agenda.

instead, many of us find information niches that reinforce our opinions. going polarization has seemed to split us into two nations. >> watch this labor day on c-span and cspan.org. and listen on the free c-span radio app. up next, we take you to the university of minnesota where professor erika lee teaches a class on asian immigration to the west coast from 1830 to 1930. she focuses on the prominent role of san francisco's angel island. this 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 talked about last week. it's the history of european immigrants coming to t