Preparedness Day bombing
Encyclopedia
The Preparedness Day Bombing was a bombing in San Francisco, California
on July 22, 1916, when the city held a parade
in honor of Preparedness Day, in anticipation of the United States
' imminent entry into World War I
. During the parade a suitcase bomb
was detonated, killing ten and wounding forty in the worst such attack in San Francisco's history. Two labor leaders, Thomas Mooney
and Warren Billings, were convicted in separate trials and sentenced to be hanged. Rena Mooney and Israel Weinberg were acquitted.
, the United States saw itself poised on the edge of participation in World War I. Isolationism remained strong in San Francisco, not only among radicals such as the Industrial Workers of the World
("the Wobblies"), but also among mainstream labor leaders. At the same time, with the rise of Bolshevism and labor unrest, San Francisco's business community was nervous. The Chamber of Commerce
organized a Law and Order Committee, despite the diminishing influence and political clout of local labor organizations.
can't be forced on us and our children without a violent protest." Mooney had been tipped off to threats that preceded the parade and pushed resolutions through his union, the Molders, and the San Francisco Central Labor Council and the Building Trades Council warning that provocateurs
might attempt to blacken the labor movement by causing a disturbance at the parade.
The San Francisco Preparedness Day parade of 1916 was the largest parade
ever held in the city. The 3.5 hour procession had 51,329 marchers, including 2,134 organizations and 52 bands. Ironically, perhaps, the starting signals were "the crash of a bomb and the shriek of a siren." Military
, civic, judicial, state, and municipal divisions were followed by newspaper
, telephone
, telegraph and streetcar trade union
s. Many of the following divisions came from other cities of the San Francisco Bay Area
. At 2:06pm, about half an hour into the parade, a time bomb in the form of a cast steel pipe filled with explosives exploded on the west side of Steuart Street, just south of Market Street
, near the Ferry Building
. Before capping the steel pipe containing the explosive (believed by police to have been either TNT or dynamite
), the bombmaker had filled the pipe with metal slugs designed to act as shrapnel, greatly increasing the bomb's lethality. Ten bystanders were killed and forty wounded, including a young girl who had her legs blown off. The bombing was the worst terrorist act in San Francisco history. Witnesses differed on where the bomb was located. Some witnesses stated that they saw a man leaving a suitcase against the corner of a building at Market and Stuert streets that contained the bomb, while others, such as Dr. Mora Moss, testified he saw the bomb being hurled or dropped from the roof of a nearby building, rather than being left at the scene.
, authorities initially focused their attention on several well-known radicals and anarchists in the city, among them Alexander Berkman
, who was well known to the government for his radical politics and prior conviction as an attempted assassin. He had only recently relocated to San Francisco after being implicated in yet another bombing conspiracy, the Lexington Avenue bombing
in New York City, which resulted in the deaths of several anarchists and at least one innocent bystander. Once in San Francisco, Berkman had begun his own anarchist journal, which he named The Blast. After the Preparedness Day bombing, Berkman abruptly abandoned The Blast and returned to New York, rejoining Emma Goldman
to work on the Mother Earth Bulletin
. The San Francisco District Attorney attempted to have Berkman extradited back to San Francisco on conspiracy allegations related to the bombing, but was unsuccessful.
Two known radical labor leaders -- Thomas Mooney
(ca. 1882-1942) and his assistant, Warren K. Billings (1893–1972) -- were eventually arrested. Billings, convicted previously for carrying dynamite on a passenger train, had a reputation for enjoying direct action, and Mooney, a militant socialist, had been arrested but never convicted of conspiring to dynamite power lines during the 1913 Pacific Gas and Electric Company strike. Mooney and his wife had also previously been arrested for unsuccessfully attempting to stop streetcar operations during a planned streetcar motorman strike, and was known for being on the 'radical' side of labor activists. The conservative leaders of local trade unions and editors of labor trade papers in the San Francisco area disliked Mooney intensely, believing him to be a "dangerous troublemaker" whose methods "never produced anything but trouble." Mooney and especially Billings both had prior knowledge of how to use dynamite (Billings was also familiar with clockwork timing mechanisms, and became a watch repairman after his release from prison).
Police held Mooney incommunicado and without counsel for six days, during which time they attempted to interrogate him. Mooney declined to speak, invoking his right to counsel some forty-one times. At the grand jury proceedings, the suspects were still without counsel, and were not permitted to shave or clean up before appearing before the grand jury. The defendants refused to testify in protest of having been denied counsel. After the grand jury returned an indictment, Tom and Rena Mooney, Warren Billings, Israel Weinberg, and Ed Nolan were charged with murder. Charles M. Fickert, the District Attorney, alleged that Mooney had planted the suitcase at the bomb scene, which contained a dynamite bomb with a clock as a timing mechanism. Fickert and the police discounted the testimony of witnesses whose descriptions did not fit Mooney and Billings, or whose description of the bombing did not support the District Attorney's theory that Mooney had planted the suitcase bomb. Mooney and Billings eventually retained a well-known San Francisco criminal attorney, Maxwell McNutt, as their defense counsel.
In a set of trials, Billings was tried first in September 1916 and was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Tom Mooney was tried in January 1917 and was convicted and sentenced to hang. Rena Mooney and Israel Weinberg were both acquitted, and Ed Nolan was never brought to trial but released two months after Tom Mooney's conviction.
Years later, a Mediation Commission set up by President Woodrow Wilson
found no clear evidence of his guilt, and his death sentence was commuted. In 1918 Billings' sentence was also commuted to life imprisonment. By 1939, evidence of perjury and false testimony at the trial had become overwhelming. California Governor Culbert Olson
pardoned both men. Ansel Adams
wrote about meeting Thomas Mooney in his autobiography. Adams was a young boy at the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition, where Mooney was working. Adams later wrote, "In my memory he is a kind and gentle man."
Postwar research has led some historians to suspect involvement at some level in the bombing conspiracy by the anarchist Alexander Berkman
, given his knowledge of the Lexington Avenue bombing
conspiracy, his enthusiasm for revolutionary violence while editor of The Blast, and his hasty departure from San Francisco immediately following the Preparedness Day bombing. However, whether he was involved in the conspiracy or not, Berkman was almost certainly not the person who constructed the actual bomb, since he was known to have little or no technical skills with explosives.
Another suspect group included the Galleanists, radical anarchist followers of Luigi Galleani
, particularly the elusive Mario Buda. Buda, who was a bomb-maker of deadly repute, fit at least one witness' physical description of the bomber, and the Galleanists were known to utilize time bombs consisting of cast steel or iron pipes packed with dynamite and metal slugs or other types of shrapnel
to increase maiming and overall casualties. While the Galleanists conducted most of their bomb attacks on the East Coast, there was a large and restive Italian anarchist community in San Francisco at the time, and many of them subscribed to Galleani's journal, Cronaca Sovversiva (Subversive Chronicle), which openly called for direct action via propaganda of the deed
while glorifying the assassination of 'militarists' and 'capitalists'. The Galleanist group was known for their ruthlessness in choosing targets, had avidly participated in successful bomb attacks as far west as Milwaukee and Chicago, and in 1919 had unleashed a campaign of mail bombings
to victims all over the country, including two booby-trap bombs sent to District Attorney Fickert and his assistant Edward A. Cunha in San Francisco, the men who had prosecuted Mooney and Billings. Luigi Galleani himself wrote that police had not arrested "the right criminal", later telling investigators that he was "positively sure" with "mathematical certitude" that Mooney was not the bomber. The Galleanist group would go on to utilize bomb designs nearly identical to that of the Preparedness Day Bomb in several subsequent bombings during 1918 and 1919,, while Mario Buda was the prime suspect in the later and very similar Wall Street bombing
in Washington, D.C. in 1920. Additionally, in an apparent oblique reference to an event in February 1916 in which a Galleanist operative in Chicago, Nestor Dondoglio, served poisoned soup to a host of political, religious and business leaders, San Francisco police recovered two unsigned letters urging the headwaiter at the St. Francis Hotel
to serve poisoned soup to Police Commissioner James Woods, one of the organizers of the Preparedness Day march, when Woods next came to dine there.
Yet another possible suspect is Celsten Eklund, a well-known San Francisco radical orator, unemployed laborer, and passionate anarchist who had been previously involved in a series of labor demonstrations and altercations with police, and who was believed to have strong ties to the Italian anarchist community. On March 6, 1927, Eklund and another man known only as 'Ricca' were shot by police as they attempted to light the fuse of a large dynamite bomb in front of the Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in San Francisco. Ricca died at the scene and Eklund was seriously wounded. The church, which had been the target of four previous bombings in the space of one year, had been a magnet for anarchist anti-catholic sentiment in the city. Eklund later died of his wounds without revealing anything to police save for the Italian last name of his fellow bomber.
prologue, was clearly aimed at local audiences. Perhaps it was thought that the film might help to "flush out" the bomber. The Hearst-Pathe film of the bombing scene was filmed after most of the bodies had been removed.
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
on July 22, 1916, when the city held a parade
Parade
A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of some kind...
in honor of Preparedness Day, in anticipation of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
' imminent entry into World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. During the parade a suitcase bomb
Suitcase bomb
A suitcase nuke is a tactical nuclear weapon which uses, or is portable enough that it could use, a suitcase as its delivery method. Synonyms include suitcase bomb, backpack nuke, mini-nuke, pocket nuke and snuke....
was detonated, killing ten and wounding forty in the worst such attack in San Francisco's history. Two labor leaders, Thomas Mooney
Thomas Mooney
Thomas Joseph "Tom" Mooney was an American political activist and labor leader, who was convicted with Warren K. Billings of the San Francisco Preparedness Day Bombing of 1916...
and Warren Billings, were convicted in separate trials and sentenced to be hanged. Rena Mooney and Israel Weinberg were acquitted.
Prelude
By mid-1916, after viewing the carnage in EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, the United States saw itself poised on the edge of participation in World War I. Isolationism remained strong in San Francisco, not only among radicals such as the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
("the Wobblies"), but also among mainstream labor leaders. At the same time, with the rise of Bolshevism and labor unrest, San Francisco's business community was nervous. The Chamber of Commerce
Chamber of commerce
A chamber of commerce is a form of business network, e.g., a local organization of businesses whose goal is to further the interests of businesses. Business owners in towns and cities form these local societies to advocate on behalf of the business community...
organized a Law and Order Committee, despite the diminishing influence and political clout of local labor organizations.
The parade
The huge Preparedness Day parade of Saturday, July 22, 1916, was a target of radicals. An unsigned antiwar pamphlet issued throughout the city in mid-July read in part, "We are going to use a little direct action on the 22nd to show that militarismMilitarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
can't be forced on us and our children without a violent protest." Mooney had been tipped off to threats that preceded the parade and pushed resolutions through his union, the Molders, and the San Francisco Central Labor Council and the Building Trades Council warning that provocateurs
Agent provocateur
Traditionally, an agent provocateur is a person employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act...
might attempt to blacken the labor movement by causing a disturbance at the parade.
The San Francisco Preparedness Day parade of 1916 was the largest parade
Parade
A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of some kind...
ever held in the city. The 3.5 hour procession had 51,329 marchers, including 2,134 organizations and 52 bands. Ironically, perhaps, the starting signals were "the crash of a bomb and the shriek of a siren." Military
Military
A military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. The military may have additional functions of use to its greater society, such as advancing a political agenda e.g...
, civic, judicial, state, and municipal divisions were followed by newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
, telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...
, telegraph and streetcar trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
s. Many of the following divisions came from other cities of the San Francisco Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
. At 2:06pm, about half an hour into the parade, a time bomb in the form of a cast steel pipe filled with explosives exploded on the west side of Steuart Street, just south of Market Street
Market Street (San Francisco)
Market Street is an important thoroughfare in San Francisco, California. It begins at The Embarcadero in front of the Ferry Building at the northeastern edge of the city and runs southwest through downtown, passing the Civic Center and the Castro District, to the intersection with Corbett Avenue in...
, near the Ferry Building
Ferry Building
The San Francisco Ferry Building is a terminal for ferries that travel across the San Francisco Bay and a shopping center located on The Embarcadero in San Francisco, California. On top of the building is a large clock tower, which can be seen from Market Street, a main thoroughfare of the city...
. Before capping the steel pipe containing the explosive (believed by police to have been either TNT or dynamite
Dynamite
Dynamite is an explosive material based on nitroglycerin, initially using diatomaceous earth , or another absorbent substance such as powdered shells, clay, sawdust, or wood pulp. Dynamites using organic materials such as sawdust are less stable and such use has been generally discontinued...
), the bombmaker had filled the pipe with metal slugs designed to act as shrapnel, greatly increasing the bomb's lethality. Ten bystanders were killed and forty wounded, including a young girl who had her legs blown off. The bombing was the worst terrorist act in San Francisco history. Witnesses differed on where the bomb was located. Some witnesses stated that they saw a man leaving a suitcase against the corner of a building at Market and Stuert streets that contained the bomb, while others, such as Dr. Mora Moss, testified he saw the bomb being hurled or dropped from the roof of a nearby building, rather than being left at the scene.
Trials and Convictions
Led by the San Francisco District Attorney, Charles FickertCharles Fickert
Charles Marron Fickert was lawyer, politician, and American football player and coach. He was the district attorney of San Francisco from 1909 until 1920, best known for prosecuting Thomas Mooney and Warren Billings for the Preparedness Day bombing of 1916.-College and football career:Born in...
, authorities initially focused their attention on several well-known radicals and anarchists in the city, among them Alexander Berkman
Alexander Berkman
Alexander Berkman was an anarchist known for his political activism and writing. He was a leading member of the anarchist movement in the early 20th century....
, who was well known to the government for his radical politics and prior conviction as an attempted assassin. He had only recently relocated to San Francisco after being implicated in yet another bombing conspiracy, the Lexington Avenue bombing
Lexington Avenue bombing
The Lexington Avenue bombing was the July 4, 1914 explosion of a bomb in an apartment at 1626 Lexington Avenue New York City, killing four people and injuring dozens.-The conspirators:...
in New York City, which resulted in the deaths of several anarchists and at least one innocent bystander. Once in San Francisco, Berkman had begun his own anarchist journal, which he named The Blast. After the Preparedness Day bombing, Berkman abruptly abandoned The Blast and returned to New York, rejoining Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
to work on the Mother Earth Bulletin
Mother Earth (magazine)
Mother Earth was an anarchist journal that described itself as "A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature," edited by Emma Goldman. Alexander Berkman, another well-known anarchist, was the magazine's editor from 1907 to 1915...
. The San Francisco District Attorney attempted to have Berkman extradited back to San Francisco on conspiracy allegations related to the bombing, but was unsuccessful.
Two known radical labor leaders -- Thomas Mooney
Thomas Mooney
Thomas Joseph "Tom" Mooney was an American political activist and labor leader, who was convicted with Warren K. Billings of the San Francisco Preparedness Day Bombing of 1916...
(ca. 1882-1942) and his assistant, Warren K. Billings (1893–1972) -- were eventually arrested. Billings, convicted previously for carrying dynamite on a passenger train, had a reputation for enjoying direct action, and Mooney, a militant socialist, had been arrested but never convicted of conspiring to dynamite power lines during the 1913 Pacific Gas and Electric Company strike. Mooney and his wife had also previously been arrested for unsuccessfully attempting to stop streetcar operations during a planned streetcar motorman strike, and was known for being on the 'radical' side of labor activists. The conservative leaders of local trade unions and editors of labor trade papers in the San Francisco area disliked Mooney intensely, believing him to be a "dangerous troublemaker" whose methods "never produced anything but trouble." Mooney and especially Billings both had prior knowledge of how to use dynamite (Billings was also familiar with clockwork timing mechanisms, and became a watch repairman after his release from prison).
Police held Mooney incommunicado and without counsel for six days, during which time they attempted to interrogate him. Mooney declined to speak, invoking his right to counsel some forty-one times. At the grand jury proceedings, the suspects were still without counsel, and were not permitted to shave or clean up before appearing before the grand jury. The defendants refused to testify in protest of having been denied counsel. After the grand jury returned an indictment, Tom and Rena Mooney, Warren Billings, Israel Weinberg, and Ed Nolan were charged with murder. Charles M. Fickert, the District Attorney, alleged that Mooney had planted the suitcase at the bomb scene, which contained a dynamite bomb with a clock as a timing mechanism. Fickert and the police discounted the testimony of witnesses whose descriptions did not fit Mooney and Billings, or whose description of the bombing did not support the District Attorney's theory that Mooney had planted the suitcase bomb. Mooney and Billings eventually retained a well-known San Francisco criminal attorney, Maxwell McNutt, as their defense counsel.
In a set of trials, Billings was tried first in September 1916 and was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Tom Mooney was tried in January 1917 and was convicted and sentenced to hang. Rena Mooney and Israel Weinberg were both acquitted, and Ed Nolan was never brought to trial but released two months after Tom Mooney's conviction.
Years later, a Mediation Commission set up by President Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
found no clear evidence of his guilt, and his death sentence was commuted. In 1918 Billings' sentence was also commuted to life imprisonment. By 1939, evidence of perjury and false testimony at the trial had become overwhelming. California Governor Culbert Olson
Culbert Olson
Culbert Levy Olson was an American lawyer and politician. A Democrat, Olson was involved in Utah and California politics and was elected as the 29th Governor of California from 1939 to 1943.-Personal background:...
pardoned both men. Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams
Ansel Easton Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West, especially in Yosemite National Park....
wrote about meeting Thomas Mooney in his autobiography. Adams was a young boy at the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition, where Mooney was working. Adams later wrote, "In my memory he is a kind and gentle man."
Later investigations
Although the identity of the bomber (or bombers) has never been precisely determined, it has been attributed by several historians to anarchists espousing direct action or propaganda by the deed. In addition to the language of the unsigned July warning leaflet, the Preparedness Day Parade event had been organized by the Chamber of Commerce and the anti-union conservative business establishment to inspire patriotism and support for U.S. entry into the world war, a development that could hardly fail to infuriate anarchists and militants. Besides Mooney and Billings, several persons are thought to have been capable of carrying out such a violent attack, all of them anarchists and advocates of direct action.Postwar research has led some historians to suspect involvement at some level in the bombing conspiracy by the anarchist Alexander Berkman
Alexander Berkman
Alexander Berkman was an anarchist known for his political activism and writing. He was a leading member of the anarchist movement in the early 20th century....
, given his knowledge of the Lexington Avenue bombing
Lexington Avenue bombing
The Lexington Avenue bombing was the July 4, 1914 explosion of a bomb in an apartment at 1626 Lexington Avenue New York City, killing four people and injuring dozens.-The conspirators:...
conspiracy, his enthusiasm for revolutionary violence while editor of The Blast, and his hasty departure from San Francisco immediately following the Preparedness Day bombing. However, whether he was involved in the conspiracy or not, Berkman was almost certainly not the person who constructed the actual bomb, since he was known to have little or no technical skills with explosives.
Another suspect group included the Galleanists, radical anarchist followers of Luigi Galleani
Luigi Galleani
Luigi Galleani was an Italian anarchist active in the United States from 1901 to 1919, viewed by historians as an anarchist communist and an insurrectionary anarchist. He is best known for his enthusiastic advocacy of "propaganda of the deed", i.e...
, particularly the elusive Mario Buda. Buda, who was a bomb-maker of deadly repute, fit at least one witness' physical description of the bomber, and the Galleanists were known to utilize time bombs consisting of cast steel or iron pipes packed with dynamite and metal slugs or other types of shrapnel
Shrapnel
Shrapnel shells were anti-personnel artillery munitions which carried a large number of individual bullets close to the target and then ejected them to allow them to continue along the shell's trajectory and strike the target individually. They relied almost entirely on the shell's velocity for...
to increase maiming and overall casualties. While the Galleanists conducted most of their bomb attacks on the East Coast, there was a large and restive Italian anarchist community in San Francisco at the time, and many of them subscribed to Galleani's journal, Cronaca Sovversiva (Subversive Chronicle), which openly called for direct action via propaganda of the deed
Propaganda of the deed
Propaganda of the deed is a concept that refers to specific political actions meant to be exemplary to others...
while glorifying the assassination of 'militarists' and 'capitalists'. The Galleanist group was known for their ruthlessness in choosing targets, had avidly participated in successful bomb attacks as far west as Milwaukee and Chicago, and in 1919 had unleashed a campaign of mail bombings
1919 United States anarchist bombings
The 1919 United States anarchist bombings were a series of bombings and attempted bombings carried out by anarchist followers of Luigi Galleani from April through June 1919...
to victims all over the country, including two booby-trap bombs sent to District Attorney Fickert and his assistant Edward A. Cunha in San Francisco, the men who had prosecuted Mooney and Billings. Luigi Galleani himself wrote that police had not arrested "the right criminal", later telling investigators that he was "positively sure" with "mathematical certitude" that Mooney was not the bomber. The Galleanist group would go on to utilize bomb designs nearly identical to that of the Preparedness Day Bomb in several subsequent bombings during 1918 and 1919,, while Mario Buda was the prime suspect in the later and very similar Wall Street bombing
Wall Street bombing
The Wall Street bombing occurred at 12:01 p.m. on Thursday, September 16, 1920, in the Financial District of New York City. The blast killed 38 and seriously injured 143...
in Washington, D.C. in 1920. Additionally, in an apparent oblique reference to an event in February 1916 in which a Galleanist operative in Chicago, Nestor Dondoglio, served poisoned soup to a host of political, religious and business leaders, San Francisco police recovered two unsigned letters urging the headwaiter at the St. Francis Hotel
St. Francis Hotel
The Westin St. Francis is a historic luxury hotel located on Powell and Geary Streets on Union Square in San Francisco, California. The two twelve-story south wings of the hotel were built just before the San Francisco Earthquake, in 1904, and the double-width north wing was completed in 1913,...
to serve poisoned soup to Police Commissioner James Woods, one of the organizers of the Preparedness Day march, when Woods next came to dine there.
Yet another possible suspect is Celsten Eklund, a well-known San Francisco radical orator, unemployed laborer, and passionate anarchist who had been previously involved in a series of labor demonstrations and altercations with police, and who was believed to have strong ties to the Italian anarchist community. On March 6, 1927, Eklund and another man known only as 'Ricca' were shot by police as they attempted to light the fuse of a large dynamite bomb in front of the Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in San Francisco. Ricca died at the scene and Eklund was seriously wounded. The church, which had been the target of four previous bombings in the space of one year, had been a magnet for anarchist anti-catholic sentiment in the city. Eklund later died of his wounds without revealing anything to police save for the Italian last name of his fellow bomber.
The film
A film about the events was made shortly after the bombings. The film, with its animated propagandisticPropaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
prologue, was clearly aimed at local audiences. Perhaps it was thought that the film might help to "flush out" the bomber. The Hearst-Pathe film of the bombing scene was filmed after most of the bodies had been removed.
Additional reading
- ACLU, The Story of Mooney and Billings. New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 1928.
- William Bourke Cockran, A Heinous Plot: An Expose of the Frame-up System in the San Francisco Bomb Cases Against Billings,Mooney, Mrs. Mooney, Weinberg and Nolan. Chicago: Chicago Federation of Labor, 1917.
- Robert MinorRobert MinorRobert Berkeley "Bob" Minor was political cartoonist, a radical journalist, and a leading member of the American Communist Party.-Early life:...
, Fickert Has Ravished Justice: Story of So-Called Bomb Trials in San Francisco. San Francisco, CA: Tom Mooney Molders Defense Committee, n.d. [1917]. - "San Francisco Newspaper Man," Tom Mooney, a Miner's Son. San Francisco, CA: Tom Mooney Molders Defense Committee, n.d. [c. 1918].
- Estolv E. Ward, The Gentle Dynamiter, Ramparts Press, Palo Alto, California: 1983.
- Curt GentryCurt GentryCurt Gentry is an American writer. He is best known for co-writing the book Helter Skelter with Vincent Bugliosi , which detailed the Charles Manson murders...
, Frame-up: The Incredible Case of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, W.W. Norton & Co., New York: 1967.