November 5, 1916: The Everett Massacre

The Everett Massacre remains, nearly a century later, among the core legends in Cascadia's radical history. On the morning of November 5, 1916, about 300 members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, a.k.a. "The Wobblies") boarded a pair of ships in Seattle and headed north toward Everett, where they planned a public demonstration that afternoon in support of striking shingle mill workers--a local cause, and a potential confrontation, that had been slowly but steadily brewing for many months.

While the Wobblies traveled north, a rumor reached Everett that a group of armed anarchists was coming to burn down the town. Some 200 local police and citizen deputies quickly gathered to repel the apocryphal invaders. When the first ship arrived, Snohomish County Sheriff Donald McRae asked, "Who is your leader?" To which one Wobbly replied, "We are all leaders!" McRae then told the passengers they could not land. Soon, a single shot was fired--whether from boat or dock is apparently lost to history--followed by several minutes of chaotic gunfire, leaving seven dead and 50 wounded from among both Wobblies and deputies, a sad catharsis of many previous confrontations between labor and the law in Everett.

A dramatic and nationally noted trial soon followed in which Wobbly Thomas Tracy was accused, and eventually acquitted, of the murder of two Everett deputies. The IWW is still active today, most notably in recent efforts, based in New York City, to establish a union for Starbucks baristas.

Sources: Norman Clark, "Mill Town: A Social History of Everett" (University of Washington Press, 1970); Murray Morgan, "Skid Road" (Viking Press, 1951); HistoryLink.org.