Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 8, 1921 Bogalusa, Louisiana – Widows of Murdered Union Men Seek Measure of Justice
From the Duluth Labor World of May 7, 1921:
COURT FINALLY TELLS MOBBERS TO FACE TRIAL ———- Southern Lumber Company and Its Agents Must Answer for Murder of Union Men. ———-
The New York Times November 23, 1919
NEW ORLEANS. May 5.—After resorting to technicalities for 18 months Federal Judge Foster has ordered the city of Bogalusa, the Great Southern Lumber company and other persons sued for damages as the result of killings at Bogalusa, in November [22nd], 1919, to stop fighting for delay and get ready for trial. It will probably be another year before the mobbers will be placed on the witness stand and forced to tell of their connection with the murder of several trade unionists and the attempted lynching of Sol Dacus, influential negro in Bogalusa, who urged fellow negro workers to stand with the white workers in the mill strike of that year.
The suits were started by the widows of the mudered unionists. In the case of George Williams the charge is made that he was beaten nearly to death because he refused to quit his business of draying and return work in the mill.
The widows charge that their husbands were killed for the “sole purpose of destroying organized labor” in Bogalusa, and that the company sounded the mill’s siren whistle to assemble the mob.
The mob first went to the home of Dacus, but the negro hid in the swamp, and with the aid of white workers made his way to New Orleans and later to Gulfport, Miss. When the mob failed to find Dacus his home was demolished, his family terrified and $1,300 worth of war savings stamps stolen.
Lum Williams, Tom Gaines, Bourgeois, Bouchillon, O’Rourke and Sol Dacus, the Black loggers’ leader, were examples of the heroes who are born in the class struggle. And I hope the time is coming when a monument to them will arise in Bogalusa with the legend in big marble letters: Heroes of Southern Timber.
[Emphasis added.]
Sadly Carpenters’ Union Convention of 2005 voted not to build a monument for the Bogalusa Labor Martyrs, see: Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-class History, Volume 1 (search: williams gaines bouchillon o’rourke bogalusa) https://books.google.com/books?id=zEWsZ81Bd3YC
BOGALUSA, La., June 26.-(By mail.)-Armed with shotguns and rifles nearly 100 determined men last Saturday marched about the negro quarter of Bogalusa to give protection to the negro workers while they attended a meeting and formed locals of the International Timberworkers’ Union and other labor unions, according to W. L. Donnels, General Organizer for the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, who conducted the meeting.
The posse in columns of two, regular military fashion, he said, marched through the streets. At its head were some 12 or 15 recently discharged soldiers in full uniform. The remainder of the posse consisted of trade unionists, merchants and business men. Each carried a rifle or shotgun. No concealed weapons were allowed in the line, he declared.
Note re nickname of L. E. Williams, sources give Lum or Lem in almost equal numbers, best to search with both and also with L. E. which gives most returns, esp legal documents.
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Solidarity Forever – Jesse Thomas Brown Lyrics by Ralph Chaplin
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