Palmer Raids
The Palmer Raids were a series of raids conducted in November 1919 and January 1920 by the United States Department of Justice under the administration of President Woodrow Wilson to capture and arrest suspected socialists, especially anarchists and communists, and deport them from the United States. The raids particularly targeted Italian immigrants and Eastern European Jewish immigrants with alleged leftist ties, with particular focus on Italian anarchists and immigrant leftist labor activists. The raids and arrests occurred under the leadership of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, with 6,000 people arrested across 36 cities. Though 556 foreign citizens were deported, including a number of prominent leftist leaders, Palmer's efforts were largely frustrated by officials at the U.S. Department of Labor, which had authority for deportations and objected to Palmer's methods.
The Palmer Raids occurred in the larger context of the
Background
During the
The fears of Wilson and other government officials were confirmed when
Preparations
Part of a series on |
Anarchism |
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In June 1919, Attorney General Palmer told the House Appropriations Committee that all evidence promised that radicals would "on a certain day...rise up and destroy the government at one fell swoop." He requested an increase in his budget to $2,000,000 from $1,500,000 to support his investigations of radicals, but Congress limited the increase to $100,000.[7]
An initial raid in July 1919 against an anarchist group in Buffalo, New York, achieved little when a federal judge tossed out Palmer's case. He found in the case that the three arrested radicals, charged under a law dating from the Civil War, had proposed transforming the government by using their free speech rights and not by violence.[8] That taught Palmer that he needed to exploit the more powerful immigration statutes that authorized the deportation of alien anarchists, violent or not. To do that, he needed to enlist the cooperation of officials at the Department of Labor. Only the Secretary of Labor could issue warrants for the arrest of alien violators of the Immigration Acts, and only he could sign deportation orders following a hearing by an immigration inspector.[9]
On August 1, 1919, Palmer named 24-year-old
At 9 pm on November 7, 1919, a date chosen because it was the second anniversary of the
When Palmer replied to the Senate's questions of October 17, he reported that his department had amassed 60,000 names with great effort. Required by the statutes to work through the Department of Labor, they had arrested 250 dangerous radicals in the November 7 raids. He proposed a new Anti-Sedition Law to enhance his authority to prosecute anarchists.[13]
Raids and arrests in January 1920
As Attorney General Palmer struggled with exhaustion and devoted all his energies to the
The Justice Department launched a series of raids on January 2, 1920, with follow up operations over the next few days. Smaller raids extended over the next 6 weeks. At least 3000 were arrested, and many others were held for various lengths of time. The entire enterprise replicated the November action on a larger scale, including arrests and seizures without search warrants, as well as detention in overcrowded and unsanitary holding facilities. Hoover later admitted "clear cases of brutality."[17] The raids covered more than 30 cities and towns in 23 states, but those west of the Mississippi and south of the Ohio were "publicity gestures" designed to make the effort appear nationwide in scope.[18] Because the raids targeted entire organizations, agents arrested everyone found in organization meeting halls, not only arresting non-radical organization members but also visitors who did not belong to a target organization, and sometimes American citizens not eligible for arrest and deportation.[19]
The Department of Justice at one point claimed to have taken possession of several bombs, but after a few iron balls were displayed to the press they were never mentioned again. All the raids netted a total of just four ordinary pistols.[20]
While most press coverage continued to be positive, with criticism only from leftist publications like The Nation and The New Republic, one attorney raised the first noteworthy protest. Francis Fisher Kane, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, resigned in protest. In his letter of resignation to the President and the Attorney General he wrote: "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." Palmer replied that he could not use individual arrests to treat an "epidemic" and asserted his own fidelity to constitutional principles. He added: "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."[21] The Washington Post endorsed Palmer's claim for urgency over legal process: "There is no time to waste on hairsplitting over infringement of liberty."[22]
Aftermath
In a few weeks, after changes in personnel at the Department of Labor, Palmer faced a new and very independent-minded Acting Secretary of Labor in Assistant Secretary of Labor
At a Cabinet meeting in April 1920, Palmer called on Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson to fire Post, but Wilson defended him. The President listened to his feuding department heads and offered no comment about Post, but he ended the meeting by telling Palmer that he should "not let this country see red." Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, who made notes of the conversation, thought the Attorney General had merited the President's "admonition", because Palmer "was seeing red behind every bush and every demand for an increase in wages."[25]
Palmer's supporters in Congress responded with an attempt to impeach Louis Post or, failing that, to censure him. The drive against Post began to lose energy when Attorney General Palmer's forecast of an attempted radical uprising on May Day 1920 failed to occur. Then, in testimony before the House Rules Committee on May 7–8, Post proved "a convincing speaker with a caustic tongue"[23] and defended himself so successfully that Congressman Edward W. Pou, a Democrat presumed to be an enthusiastic supporter of Palmer, congratulated him: "I feel that you have followed your sense of duty absolutely."[26]
On May 28, 1920, the nascent
In June 1920, a decision by Massachusetts District Court Judge George W. Anderson ordered the discharge of 17 arrested aliens and denounced the Department of Justice's actions. He wrote that "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." His decision effectively prevented any renewal of the raids.[31]
Palmer, once seen as a likely presidential candidate, lost his bid to win the Democratic nomination for president later in the year.[32] The anarchist bombing campaign continued intermittently for another twelve years.[33]
See also
- Espionage Act of 1917
- Industrial Workers of the World
- McCarthyism
- 1918-1920 New York City rent strikes
References
- ^ "Palmer Raids".
- ^ Kennedy, 24
- ISBN 978-1-84989-944-4.
- ^ ISBN 0-691-02604-1(1991), pp. 140–143, 147, 149–156
- ^ "Plotter Here Hid Trail Skillfully; His victim Was a Night Watchman; Police Study Anarchistic Handbills Adroitly Placed by the Conspirator-Expert Declares Bomb Held Twenty-fivePounds of Dynamite. Thinks Bomb Contained Dynamite. Windows All About Shattered. PLOTTER HERE HID TRAIL SKILFULLY Handbills Studied by Police. Hylan Consults Enright". The New York Times. 4 June 1919.
- ^ "WRECK JUDGE NOTT'S HOME; Man and Woman Killed May Have Been Bomb Setters. MRS. NOTT IN THE HOUSE She and Caretaker's Family Escape, Though Front of Building Was Shattered. JUDGE NOTT IN THE COUNTRY Police Rush Guards to Homes of Officials and Judges Throughout the City. Child's Amazing Escape. Stairways Fall. Other Houses Shattered. WRECK JUDGE NOTT'S HOME. All Police Agencies Active. Crowds Hamper Police. Judge Nott's Public Career". The New York Times. 3 June 1919.
- ^ Hagedorn, 229–30; Coben, 211
- ^ Pietruszka, 146–7
- ^ Coben 217–8
- ^ Coben, 207–9
- ^ Coben, 214–5
- ^ Coben, 219–21; Post, 28–35. Post says 11 cities.
- ^ "PALMER FOR STRINGENT LAW; Attorney General Asks Senate for Sedition Act to Fit Reds. NEW PUNISHMENT PLAN He Would Send All Aliens from Country and Denaturalize Convicted Citizens. TELLS OF REDS' ACTIVITIES Work of Union of Russians Revealed--472 PublicationsPreaching Anarchy. The Attorney General's Letter. PALMER FOR STRINGENT LAW Penal Code Test Case. Where the Laws Are Weak. Difficulties of Deportation. Many "Red" Publications. Radical Papers Increase. Proposed Anti-Sedition Law. ASKS FOR IRON-CLAD LAWS. Mayor of Portland Appeals to Senate for Immediate Legislation". The New York Times. 16 November 1919.
- ^ "Miners Finally Agree" (PDF). The New York Times. December 11, 1919. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09. Retrieved June 11, 2014.
- ^ Coben, 222–3
- ^ Murray, 223–7
- ^ Murray, 227–9
- ^ States (cities where available): California (Los Angeles, San Francisco), Colorado (Denver), Connecticut (Ansonia, Bridgeport, Hartford, Meriden, New Haven, New London, South Manchester, Waterbury), Florida, Illinois (Chicago, Rockford, East St. Louis), Indiana, Iowa (Des Moines), Kansas (Kansas City), Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts (Boston, Chelsea, Brockton, Bridgewater, Norwood, Worcester, Springfield, Chicopee Falls, Holyoke, Gardner, Fitchburg, Lowell, Lawrence, Haverhill), Michigan (Detroit), Minnesota (St. Paul), Nebraska (Omaha), New Hampshire (Claremont, Derry, Lincoln, Manchester, Nashua, Portsmouth), New Jersey (Camden), New York (Buffalo and "nearby towns", New York City), Ohio (Cleveland, Toledo, Youngstown), Oregon (Portland), Pennsylvania (Chester, Pittsburgh), Washington (Spokane), Wisconsin (Milwaukee, Racine). Others were arrested in West Virginia by agents working from Pittsburgh. Post, 91–2, 96, 104–5, 108, 110, 115–6, 120–1, 124, 126, 131
- ^ Post, 96–147, passim
- ^ Post, 91–5, 96–147
- ^ Coben, 230; The New York Times: "Palmer Upholds Red Repression," January 24, 1920, accessed January 15, 2010,
- ^ The Washington Post, "The Red Assassins," January 4, 1920
- ^ a b Coben, 232
- ISBN 978-0-87586-495-2(2007), p. 36
- ^ Daniels, 545–6
- ^ Post, 273
- ^ "ACLU History".
- ^ Report Upon the Illegal Practices of the United States Department of Justice. National Popular Government League. 1920.
- ^ Chafee, 197, ch. 5 "Deportations"
- ^ Murray, 255–6
- ^ Murray, 250–1; Post, 97
- ^ Pietrusza, 257
- ^ Avrich, 214
General bibliography
- Avrich, Paul, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background (Princeton University Press, 1991)
- Chafee, Zechariah, Freedom of Speech (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Howe, 1920)
- Coben, Stanley, A. Mitchell Palmer: Politician (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963)
- Daniels, Josephus, The Wilson Era: Years of War and After, 1917–1923 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1946)
- Dunn, Robert W. The Palmer Raids. New York: International Publishers. 1948.
- Finan, Christopher M. (2007). From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America. Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0-8070-4428-5.
- Hagedorn, Ann, Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007)
- Kennedy, David M., Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980)
- Murray, Robert K., Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919–1920 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955)
- Pietrusza, David, 1920: The Year of Six presidents (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2007)
- Post, Louis F., The Deportations Delirium of Nineteen-twenty: A Personal Narrative of a Historic Official Experience (New York, 1923), reissued: ISBN 1-4102-0553-3
- Shepley, Nick (2015). The Palmer Raids and the Red Scare: 1918-1920: Justice and Liberty for All. Andrews UK Limited. ISBN 978-1-84989-945-1.
Further reading
- Pusey, Allen (2015). "Palmer Raids Target Immigrants". ABA Journal. 101: 100.
- Popkova, Anna (2 January 2022). "Imagining the Russian Community: Novoye Russkoe Slovo , the First Red Scare, and the Palmer Raids, 1919-1920". Journalism History. 48 (1): 41–60. S2CID 246293091.
- Cohen, Harlan Grant (2003). "The (Un)favorable Judgment of History: Deportation Hearings, the Palmer Raids, and the Meaning of History" (PDF). New York University Law Review. 78: 1431.
External links
- Media related to Palmer Raids at Wikimedia Commons