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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 5, 1920
Centralia, Washington – The Story of Blind Tom Lassiter
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of April 28, 1920:
BLIND NEWSBOY VICTIM SECOND CENTRALIA MOB
—–Because Tom Lassiter Sold Union Records and Butte Bulletins
Super-Patriots of Lumber Town Maltreated Him.
—–(By JOHN NICHOLAS BEFFEL.)
(Staff Correspondent,
the Federated Press.)
Centralia, Wash., (By Mail).-It was the second of the three Centralia mobs that got Blind Tom Lassiter, newsboy. His crime was that he sold the Seattle Union Record, workers’ newspaper, and was a wobbly. Twice the mob burned all his possessions, then kidnaped him on the open street, and sped with him to another county.
Gov. Louis F. Hart knows the facts of this flagrant case. They were presented to him, substantiated by affidavits of reputable eye-witnesses. But the men who abused and exiled Lassiter, a law-abiding American citizen, have never been prosecuted.
Prosecuting Attorney Herman Allen of Lewis county knows the facts. They were presented to him with similar affidavits. But Allen has never taken any steps to punish the guilty men.
Judge John M. Wilson, who tried the ten I. W. W. in the Centralia labor case at Montesano, knows the facts about the Lassiter episode. They were offered to him in detail by Defense Counsel George F. Vanderveer. Those facts ought, by every tenet of justice, have been given to the jury. But the court said no.
So the story of what happened to Blind Tom Lassiter is little known outside of Centralia. Mention of it crept occasionally into the news stories published in perhaps four newspapers across the country; but its real significance needs to be made clear.
I remember that I boiled inwardly when I first heard about the Lassiter case. The story had come out in the Seattle Union Record a few weeks before the Armistice day tragedy here. Lassiter had been robbed and ruined and kidnaped in June [1919], and now it was September [1919] and the governor and prosecuting attorney had taken no action against the robbers nor the kidnapers, though their names were known to almost everybody here, and the governor and Allen know.
[Floyd Kaylor wrote in the Union Record in September [1919]:]
With the kidnaping of Lassiter, free speech in Centralia came to an end, and there was established a mild but effective reign of terror in which the majority of Centralia’s people fear to tell what they know about the incident and answer questions by saying:
“For God’s sake don’t use my name. It was was an outrage and a disgrace to Centralia-but I don’t know anything about it. Better let it go-we have had trouble enough, and the power of the invisible government here is strong.”
Lassiter had a tiny store at 525 North Tower avenue-“a half a dry-goods box”-where in he sold the Union Record, the Liberator and other radical publications which for a long time have not been welcomed by the business interests of the northwest. This modest store was a short distance from the building in which the I. W. W. subsequently opened their final headquarters here after being homeless for many months. An older hall occupied by the wobblies had been wrecked by the tail-end at of a Red Cross parade in April, 1918, and the wobblies found inside had been led out of town with ropes about their necks.
Warnings were sent out at that time that every member of the I. W. W. would have to make themselves scarce, or there would be tar-and-feather parties. That warning was passed to Blind Tom Lassiter. But he didn’t leave town. For months the wobblies made no attempt to open new quarters. They met on the job in the lumber camps, assembling in small groups in pool halls, and a handful at a time they gathered in the limited space of Lassiter’s news store.
On the night of June 5, 1919. Lassiter was selling papers at a carnival. The blind newsboy had great energy, and got around with facility. He is sightless save that he can distinguish the vague silhouettes of objects immediately before him. He can tell when some one stands in front of him by the shadowy bulk of that person, but cannot identify the individual visually.
While Lassiter was at the carnival, at gang of local business men broke into his newsstand, took out all the blind man’s properties and burned them in the street. They left intact only an American flag and a placard, “Union Record for Sale Here.” This placard was left surmounting the pile of ashes where Lassiter’s possessions has been burned. The flag was tied to the doorknob, and with it was a crudely printed card bearing the words, “You leave town in 24 hours.” This card was signed, “U. S. Returned Soldiers, Sailors and Marines.”
Lassiter made his home in the tiny news store, did his own cooking-a hand-to-mouth existence-took part in discussions of economics when the wobblies gathered there at evening. When he got home that June night from the carnival, all his possessions were gone. The gang had burned up his clothing, his books from which friends read to him, and his cooking utensils were bat!teed into uselessness.
But the blind man didn’t heed the warning. He had been hammered by fate all his life, and somehow had survived. Now he bought new furniture, cooking apparatus, clothes, and magazine stock. On the night of June 12 the gang came again, destroyed everything, and left a new warning. Lassiter slept on newspapers on the floor that night.
Next morning he visited Elmer Stuart Smith, the one attorney in Centralia who had had sand enough to take wobbly cases. Smith began investigating. In mid-afternoon Tom Lassiter was groping his way across the intersection of Main and Tower avenue, in the center of town. Several men grabbed him, threw him into an automobile owned by a prominent citizen, and the car then sped out of town to the North.
Numerous eye-witnesses have made affidavits to the circumstances of the kidnaping. Some of them declare that they asked Constable Luther Patton if he was going to let the gang get away. Patton answered that the kidnapers had a speedy car, and he couldn’t run fast enough to catch them. W. R. Patton, land-owner, is named in the affidavits as one of the men involved. Witnesses declare that he said, “Well, we got that one pretty slick, and now there are two more we have got to get.”
Word was passed to Elmer Stuart Smith, and he telephoned to Prosecutor Allen and Sheriff John Berry, over in Chehalis, four miles from here. They came to Centralia promptly, but when they learned that the kidnapers had carried Lassiter into Thurston county, they said they could do nothing.
Lassiter was dumped into a ditch by the roadside beyond the count line, and was warned not to come back to Centralia, that the town didn’t want any wobblies within its limits; if he came back, he was told, something worse would happen to him. Some time later passing automobilists found Lassiter, and took pity on him. They conveyed him to the home of friends in Thurston county, and there he telephoned Attorney Smith.
Smith got many affidavits of the facts, and presented them to Prosecutor Allen, who promised to take action against the culprits. But weeks passed, and Allen did nothing. So Smith duplicated the affidavits, and went to Governor Hart in Olympia. Hart said the natter was in the hands of the local prosecuting attorney, but that if Allen didn’t act within a reasonable length of time, he would investigate.
Again Smith visited the county seat. Allen now said: “I’ll proceed against these people if you want me to, but the charge would be only third degree assault, which would mean a fine of one dollar and costs.” He refused to prosecute on the charge of kidnaping, though clearly that crime had been committed.
[Declared Blind Tom Lassiter:]
I am a citizen of the United States. I have never broken any of its laws, and do not intend to do so. Because of my blindness, I cannot positively identify the men who kidnaped me. I have never done anything through malice or hatred of my fellow-man, and I do not intend to swear to anything my conscience does not tell me is positive truth. The men guilty of these outrages are without regard or respect for the American flag or the constitution.
But if Lassiter could not see who kidnapped him, there were plenty of others who did see the thing happen. And when the wobblies learned late in October that the business interests were planning anew to raid their hall, they remembered what had happened to their blind comrade. And they remembered the warning of the kidnapers that if Lassiter came back something worse would happen to him; and that “the town (which meant the business men) didn’t want any wobblies hanging around.”
Blind Tom has left town. He is working a little farm a few miles away. He was told the other day that Prosecutor Allen had promised to prosecute the lynchers of Wesley Everest-if the evidence was presented to him. But Lassiter was skeptical.
“He’d probably offer to prosecute them for third degree assault,” the blind man said.
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[Photograph and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
Quote Wesley Everest, Died for my class. Chaplin Part 15
https://www.iww.org/history/library/Chaplin/centralia-conspiracy/15
The Butte Daily Bulletin
(Centralia, Washington)
-Apr 28, 1920
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045085/1920-04-28/ed-1/seq-2/
IMAGE
The Centralia Conspiracy
-by Ralph Chaplin
Pub’d by Chicago GDC, 1924 Revised Edition
(search: lassiter)
https://books.google.com/books?id=llVSAQAAMAAJ
Photo of Tom Lassiter
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=llVSAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA104
See also:
Tag: Centralia Armistice Day Conspiracy of 1919
https://weneverforget.org/tag/centralia-armistice-day-conspiracy-of-1919/
Tag: John Nicholas Beffel
https://weneverforget.org/tag/john-nicholas-beffel/
From Topeka’s Kansas Trades Unionist of Mar 5, 1920:
John Nicholas Beffel
re Mob v IWW at Centralia and Lynching of Wesley Everest
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Workingmen Unite – Joe Glazer
Lyrics by E. S. Nelson