We respect [the IWW] as one of the
social and political movements
in modern times that draws no color line.
-WEB DuBois for The Crisis ———-
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 7, 1919
Fellow Worker Ben Fletcher, Prisoner at Leavenworth, Remembered
From The Crisis of June 1919:
I. W. W.
[by W.E.B. Du Bois]
Fellow Worker Ben Fletcher
AN editorial in the Easter CRISIS (written during the Editor’s absence) has been misunderstood and was, perhaps, itself partially misleading.
Mr. F. H. M. Murray of Washington, D. C., writes us:
In a recent editorial in your magazine the statement is made that there are no Negroes among the Industrial Workers of the World. While I am certain that the statement is erroneous, I am not at this moment able to lay my hands on anything in print to confirm my denial, except the following from an article in last Sunday’s New York Call magazine, by David Karsner, who reported the trial of the big batch of members of the I. W. W- in Chicago last summer and later the trial of the five Socialists at the same place. He is writing about Judge Kenesaw M. Landis, who presided at both trials and who imposed upon the hundred or so I. W. W., who were convicted, and the five Socialists, sentences aggregating over nine hundred years in prison and fines aggregating over two millions of dollars. Mr. Karsner says:
“There was only one defendant among the I. W. W., to my knowledge, who refused to believe in Judge Landis [during the trial]. He was Ben Fletcher, the sole Negro defendant. One day in the corridor I asked Ben what he thought of Judge Landis. Ben smiled broadly, ‘He’s a fakir. Wait until he gets a chance; then he’ll plaster it on thick.’ Ben was a sure-thing prophet, for the Judge plastered him with ten years, and his counsel said with not enough evidence to invite a reprimand.”
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday April 27, 1919
From Leavenworth Prison – Poetry of Charles Ashleigh and H. Austin Simons
The following three poems appeared in the Ohio Socialist of April 23, 1919. The first is by Fellow Worker Charles Ashleigh and the second is by H. Austin Simons, Conscientious Objector. The third is by Mary O’Reilly, Socialist of Chicago.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 15, 1919
Leavenworth Penitentiary, Kansas – Brutal Treatment of Prisoners Reported
From The New Appeal of January 11, 1919:
[Part 1 of 2.]
In its issue of last week The New Appeal reproduced a report of conscientious objectors at Camp Funston, Kans., detailing the brutal treatment to which they were subjected at the command of certain officers, contrary to the express directions of the war department in Washington. This report was published primarily as a matter of record, the guilty officers having been dismissed from the service and the conditions complained of corrected.
We are now in the way of making a more important exposure-an exposure of brutalities committed upon Socialists, I. W. W.s. and others imprisoned in the Federal penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kans., brutalities that we have reason to believe have not been brought to the notice of the higher authorities since the efforts of interested persons to investigate these brutalities have been baffled at every turn by prison officials. Enough evidence has been dragged into the light, however, to make it shamefully plain, to use the words of Mrs. Floyd Ramp, wife of a Socialist prisoner, “that things are occurring in this penitentiary which citizens of a democracy should not knowingly countenance.”
Could Not Question Prisoners.
On December 12, F. H. Moore, a Chicago attorney, went to Leavenworth to discuss certain legal steps with the group of prisoners sentenced under the Chicago indictment of the I. W. W. alleged anti-war agitators. He also desired to make personal inquiry of the treatment the prisoners were receiving, disquieting reports of which had reached him through “underground” channels. In company with Miss Caroline A. Lowe, who assisted in the defense of the prisoners at the trial, Mr. Moore called upon the warden. They were told by the warden that they could talk over legal matters connected with the case, but they were absolutely forbidden to question the prisoners as to conditions in the penitentiary.
Mr. Moore, in a somewhat lengthy communication sent to The New Appeal, repeatedly emphasizes this autocratic censorship of the warden. As they interviewed, separately, each one of twenty-two prisoners held in solitary confinement with unusual punishment, the deputy warden, who was present during the interviews, sternly suppressed every attempt to question the prisoners as to the manner in which they had been handled and as to their physical condition at the time. Nor were Mr. Moore and Miss Lowe, when they met and conferred with the majority of the prisoners in a body permitted to refer to the condition of their fellow prisoners who were “in solitary.”
While there is a soul in prison
I am not free.
-Eugene Victor Debs
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 9, 1919
America’s Political Prisoners by Floyd Dell
From The Liberator of January 1919:
“What Are You Doing Out There?”
[by Floyd Dell]
THIS magazine goes to two classes of readers: those who are in jail, and those who are out. This particular article is intended for the latter class. It is intended for those who wish to prove themselves friends of American freedom rather than those who have had it proved against them.
The relation between these two classes of people is embarrassingly like that in the old anecdote about Emerson and Thoreau. Thoreau refused to obey some law which he considered unjust, and was sent to jail. Emerson went to visit him. “What are you doing in here, Henry?” asked Emerson.
“What are you doing out there?” returned Thoreau grimly.
That is what the people who have gone to prison for the ideas in which we believe seem to be asking us now.
And the only self-respecting answer which we can give to this grim, silent challenge, is this: “We are working to get you out!”
That is our excuse, and we must see that it is a true one. We are voices to speak up for those whose voice has been silenced.
There are some silences that are more eloquent than speech. The newspapers were forbidden to print what ‘Gene Debs said in court; but his silence echoes around the earth in the heart of workingmen. They know what he was not allowed to tell them; and they feel that it is true.
It would be wrong to think of this as an opportunity to do something for Debs; it is rather our opportunity to make ourselves worthy of what he has done for us.
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