The Everett Massacre, Nineteen Sixteen
Near Woodinville, Washington
On November fifth, nineteen sixteen, two steamers carrying Industrial Workers of the World organizers pulled toward the Everett city dock, just west of here. They had come from Seattle to support a shingle-weavers strike. Waiting on the dock was a crowd of armed deputies, some two hundred men deputized by Sheriff Donald McRae, backed by local mill owners.
Gunfire broke out, though witnesses disagreed about who fired first. When it ended, at least five Wobblies were dead and two deputies killed. Dozens more were wounded.
Seventy-four IWW members were arrested and charged with murder. Eventually all were released, as prosecutors could not prove who had fired which shots. The event is remembered as one of the deadliest confrontations in Pacific Northwest labor history, a flashpoint between organized capital and the radical labor movement that was reshaping the industrial West.
