March 5, 1917: The Wobblies on Trial

The local labor cataclysm known as the Everett Massacre may have been sudden and swift, but its aftermath certainly wasn't. The drama which began on Nov. 5, 1916 stretched out over six months and reached its crescendo with a nationally-noted legal trial which began on the date in focus here.

The trial concerned the culpability of 74 members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, a.k.a. "The Wobblies") who had been arrested upon their return to Seattle from the scene of the massacre, incarcerated in the Snohomish County jail in Everett, and charged with the murder of Jefferson Beard and C. O. Curtis, two citizen deputies who had been killed in the melee. The first of the Wobblies to be tried was Thomas Tracy, a prominent IWW leader at the time.

In an intriguing twist at one point in the trial, forensic evidence indicated that Curtis was most likely killed by one of his fellow deputies, so that charge was quietly dropped. Another contributing factor explaining the length and complexity of the trial was the IWW's perception of itself as a microcosm of the class struggle they were then passionately committed to winning.

Tracy was finally acquitted on May 5, 1917. Shortly thereafter, all charges were dropped against the remaining 73 defendants and they were released from jail. There was no appeal, nor were charges ever made against any of the citizen deputies who may have murdered the five Wobblies who also died in the massacre.

Sources: Norman Clark, "Mill Town: A Social History of Everett" (University of Washington Press, 1970); Walker C. Smith, "The Everett Massacre: A History of the Class Struggle in the Lumber Industry" (IWW Publishing Bureau, 1918; Da Capo Press 1971).