History Repeats - The Palmer Raids
News has come out that on Tuesday, January 21 newly inaugurated president Donald Trump is planning mass raids of “illegal immigrants” to occur in Chicago. Residents are being urged to have documentation of their citizenship on their person if they live in communities with large immigrant populations or work at companies that employ undocumented workers. And I can’t help but feel a sense of Deja vu.
TLDR: In 1919 and 1920, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer with the help of J. Edgar Hoover executed raids in more than 36 cities that arrested more than 600 people and eventually deported 556 people for their anarchist associations.
Background
Starting in the late 1800s, the type of immigrant coming to America had changed. Irish, Welsh, and German immigration had slowed and been replaced, at least on the East Coast, by Eastern European, Jewish, and Italian immigrants. These immigrants brought with them new ideas and inspired new fears among the American populace. At the time, these populations would have been considered non-white and sparked a lot of race discrimination.
On May 4, 1886, in Haymarket Square in Chicago workers gathered in support of a workers strike in demand of an 8 hour work day. The previous day at a labor demonstration, 2 demonstrators had been killed and many police and demonstrators had been injured. As police were trying to break up the rally on May 4, an unknown person tossed a dynamite bomb at the police. Between the bomb blast and the ensuing police gunfire, 7 police officers and at least 4 civilians were killed. Many more were injured. 8 anarchists were eventually charged and convicted of conspiracy in the matter. However, none of them had been the one to throw the bomb and only 2 of the 8 were even present in Haymarket Square on the day. Of those 8, 7 were sentenced to death and 1 to a 15 year prison sentence. The IL governor at the time commuted 2 of the death sentences to life in prison. 1 of the convicted died of suicide before his execution. 4 were hanged on November 11, 1887. The final defendant was pardoned in 1893. This event was not only an inciting incident for the rise of labor organizations and unionization in the United States but was also a foundational event for many American anarchists, including Emma Goldman.
On September 6, 1901, American citizen Leon Czolgosz shot President William McKinley twice in the abdomen at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY. Czolgosz had been born in Detroit, MI in 1873 to Polish immigrant parents. He moved around and eventually made it to Cleveland, OH where he worked in a factory until 1893 where he was terminated due to a labor dispute. When the economy took a downturn following the Panic of 1893, he became increasingly involved in anarchist circles. He became to regard President McKinley as a symbol of oppression, leading him to Buffalo in 1901. His trial began on September 23, just 9 days after the president succumbed to his wounds. It lasted 2 days and the jury deliberated for all of 30 minutes before finding him guilty. He was executed by electric chair on October 29, 1901, less than 2 months after the incident.
In the aftermath, anti-anarchist sentiments grew. In 1901, a NY court had ruled that the act of identifying oneself as an anarchist in front of an audience was a breach of the peace. This fear of anarchists lead to surveillance programs which eventually coalesced in 1908 into the formation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
One of the most prominent anarchists of the era was Emma Goldman. She had been born in Lithuania, then part of the Russian empire, and emigrated to the United States in 1885. She was a prominent lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women’s rights, and other social issues. In the 1890s, she was jailed for the illegal distribution of information about birth control. Eventually, she was arrested in the Palmer raids and deported to Russia in December 1919.
The Palmer Raids
The mid-1910s experienced great upheaval. Europe tore itself asunder with a world war that eventually drew America in. Following the end of the war was the Spanish Flu pandemics. Economic instability and rapid social change, in part due to mass immigration, made a lot of establishment groups nervous.
All of this came to a head when a group of Italian anarchists, suspected followers of Luigi Galleani, sent a series of bombs in the mail to prominent government officials in April and June 1919. In the June set, one was mailed to the home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer in response to his policy of politically motivated mass arrests and deportations. On August 1, 1919, Mitchell named J. Edgar Hoover to head the General Intelligence Division of the FBI.
On November 7, 1919, the GID initiated violent raids against the Union of Russian workers in 12 cities. In addition to scooping up Russian immigrants, they captured American citizens, passers by who admitted to being Russian, and teachers who were conducting classes in spaces shared with the Union. 650 people were arrested that night leading to 43 eventually being deported. Hoover loosened guidelines on telling those arrested of their right to an attorney on the night of their arrest, to protect government interests. Secretary of Justice Wilson insisted that more than membership in an anarchist organization was necessary for a warrant. However, Hoover went around this by working with compliant Dept of Justice staff and overwhelmed staff to get the warrants he wanted. He would later claim ignorance of this.
In January 1920, six weeks of raids began targeting over 3000 people. Hoover would later admit to there being “clear cases of brutality” during these arrests. Those arrested were often kept in terrible conditions and were not treated humanely. During all these arrests only 4 pistols were seized, no other weapons. By the end, more than 6000 people would be arrested in 36 cities. The US Department of Labor objected but 556 people were eventually deported. It also prompted race riots in more than 30 cities.
US Attorney in Easter Pennsylvania Francis Fisher Kane resigned in protest of these raids. In his letter of resignation he said “It seems to me that the policy of raids against large numbers of individuals is generally unwise and very apt to result in injustice. People not really guilty are likely to be arrested and railroaded through their hearings...We appear to be attempting to repress a political party...By such methods, we drive underground and make dangerous what was not dangerous before." (citation) Attorney General Palmer replied, “The Government should encourage free political thinking and political action, but it certainly has the right for its own preservation to discourage and prevent the use of force and violence to accomplish that which ought to be accomplished, if at all, by parliamentary or political methods”. He defended his use of mass raids as the only effective method of rooting out the issue. The Washington Post, proving Bezos isn’t the only problematic component, defended Palmer saying “There is no time to waste on hairsplitting over infringement of liberty”.
556 resident immigrants were eventually deported, including Emma Goldman. Many of the Russian immigrants were sent back to a Russia in the midst of a civil war. One side of this conflict was significantly more receptive to its anarchist countrymen. The United States government claimed they tried to leave these deported individuals with the more favorable side, though this wasn’t always the case.
Aftermath
In the wake of these mass arrests and deportations, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was founded. On April 15, 1920, a guard and a paymaster at the Slater and Morris Shoe Company in Braintree, MA were killed during an armed robbery. Two Italian immigrants were charged and convicted of the murders, Sacco and Vanzetti. 7 years after the robbery, they were executed by electric chair. Anti-Italianism, anti-immigrant, and anti-anarchist bias was suspected of heavily influencing the trial and verdict. In 1977, MA governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation that the pair had been unfairly tried and convicted. In June 1920, MA District Court judge George W. Anderson said “ a mob is a mob, whether made up of Government officials acting under instructions from the Department of Justice, or of criminals and loafers and the vicious classes”. In 1924, Congress passed legislation that vastly changed the way immigration was handled in the United States, specifically creating a quota system based on population groups present in the US during the 1900 census. This specifically kept quotas low on immigrant populations from Eastern Europe and Asia. This immigration policy is the basis for our current immigration system 100 years later.
J. Edgar Hoover went on to be the most influential director of the FBI. He was instrumental in McCarthy era raids and the Red Scare of the 1950s.
Conclusion
It’s almost become cliche to talk about those not knowing history being doomed to repeat it. This country, despite our best attempts to paint it otherwise, was built on racism and exclusion. We have always feared the unfamiliar and different. 100 years ago it was Italians and those with different views on labor (views that came to be mainstream, I should add). Today it’s undocumented immigrants from Latin America who have come to the United States seeking safety and economic opportunity. Certain members of the political landscape have, for years, made them the enemy. Blamed them for the issues in our society. Told ordinary Americans that they are the ones to blame for their lot in life. That excising them from the country will bring peace and prosperity to all.
But it’s a lie. The Palmer raids did not improve the life of the average American. It just made millions of immigrants and the children of immigrants afraid. All of our civil liberties are weakened when we allow the liberties of those we fear to be infringed upon. Mass raids, mass deportations, and lessening of the rule of law harm each and every one of us. We must stand together to oppose these actions or we will fall together into tyranny and authoritarianism. We have the chance to change the story, to avoid the pitfalls of the past. We cannot sit idly by.