Centralia Tragedy Collection

Mr. Block and the profiteers

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), sometimes known as the Wobblies, is a radical labor organization that was most active from 1900 to the 1930s. This collection of pamphlets, leaflets and letters, originally held by the now defunct I.W.W. Seattle Office, focuses on the Centralia Tragedy of 1919 in Centralia, Washington. The event is also known as the Armistice Day Riot and the Centralia Massacre, a term coined not largely adopted by the labor movement and social justice advocates because it suggest a one-sided confrontation, when in fact both sides were armed.

The material for this database was drawn from a collection in the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections Division entitled, Industrial Workers of the World. Seattle Office, Accession No. 0544-001. Not all the material from this collection was included in this database.

About the Database

The material for this database was drawn from a collection entitled, Industrial Workers of the World. Seattle Office, Accession No. 0544-001, which resides in the UW Libraries Special Collections Division. Not all the material from this collection was included in this database. The material was scanned in grayscale using a Microtek Scanmaker 9600L and saved in .jpg format. Some manipulation of the images was done to present the clearest possible digital image. The scanned images were then linked with descriptive data using Content. The information for the Centralia Tragedy Collection was researched and prepared by the UW Libraries Special Collections and Cataloging staff in 2001.

Additional Resources

The websites and texts listed below offer additional information about the Centralia Tragedy, from a variety of viewpoints.

• Manuscripts Collections: The subset of the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections Division, from which the materials for this database were selected.
• Industrial Workers of the World site: The (un)official I.W.W. website.
• The "Centralia Tragedy": A concise description of the event on a personal site, with pictures and documents from the time.

Bibliography

Secondary Sources: Centralia Tragedy of 1919

• Chaplin, Ralph, and Ben Hur Lampman. 1971. The Centralia case; three views of the Armistice Day tragedy at Centralia, Washington, November 11, 1919: The Centralia conspiracy. New York: Da Capo Press. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/163820
• Industrial Workers of the World. 1924. Eight men buried alive: the Centralia case calls to every decent man and woman in the state of Washington to act quickly. Chicago: General Defense Committee. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/18209196
• Irish, Kerry E. 1989. Eternal vengeance: a history of the Centralia massacre. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/20645001
• MacPhee, Donald A. "The Centralia Incident and the Pamphleteers," Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 62:3.
• McClelland, John Jr., Wobbly War: The Centralia Story http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/17365653
• Industrial Workers of the World History Project. (Includes some digitized primary sources as well as secondary sources (this page)

Primary Sources: Centralia Tragedy of 1919

• University of Washington Libraries
  • Labor Archives of Washington Research Sources:
    1. Rayfield Becker Papers (Defendant) https://bit.ly/2qT7qbW
    2. Eugene Barnett Oral History (Defendant, Digitized) https://bit.ly/2K4jSy9
    3. Industrial Workers of the World Seattle Joint Branches Records https://bit.ly/2F9ZSX6
  • Special Collections Research Sources:
    1. American Legion Collection (Trial Transcripts) https://bit.ly/2vFVUpN
    2. American Civil Liberties Union of Washington records https://bit.ly/2qSFPaN
    3. E. Raymond Attebery Papers https://bit.ly/2qRsnVk
    4. Luke S. May papers https://bit.ly/2Hor2LQ
    5. Miles Poindexter papers https://bit.ly/2Hqmghf
• Oregon Historical Society
  1. Julia Ruuttila Papers https://bit.ly/2qUSx8P
  2. Labor Collection https://bit.ly/2KazRuD
  3. Ray Becker papers https://bit.ly/2qTApfH
• Washington State University Special Collections
  1. Radical Literature collection https://bit.ly/2K6Xjck