Tag: Emerson Defense Committee Alexandria LA

Hellraisers Journal: Nine Members of Brotherhood of Timber Workers Now on Trial in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote BBH re BTW LA White n Black Unity, ISR p106 , Aug 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday October 26, 1912
Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana – Fellow Workers on Trial for Their Lives

From The Wheeling Majority of October 24, 1912:

BTW, Shall Murder be Done, Def Com, Wlg Maj p6, Oct 24, 1912

—————

The Grabow “Conspiracy”
———-

Alexandria, La., Oct. 24.-(Special.)-at 11:40 a. m., Monday morning, October 7th, in the District Court of Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, Judge Winston Overton presiding, began the trial of President A. L. Emerson, Organizer Ed. Lehman, John Helton, R. H. Chatman, Edgar Hollingsworth, Louis Brown, Jack Payne, Ed Ezell and C. Havens, the nine members of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers the Southern Lumber Association has picked out to victimize in order to crush Unionism throughout the South.

The whole of  the first day was taken up in preparation and in a fight made by Judge E. T. Hunter, leading counsel for the defense, for time, about two weeks, in which to ask the Supreme Court of Louisiana for a writ of mandamus setting aside the District Court’s order severing the cases of the nine men on trial from the balance of their 58 brothers who had been indicted jointly with them for “conspiracy to murder.” The Court admitted Judge Hunter’s contention correct law, but refused to grant the petition, mainly on the round that it would be impossible to try the 58 accused all together, because the law gave them 1044 challenges.

Judge Hunter pointed out to the court that that was not the fault of the accused, that they had not indicted themselves and were not responsible for the blunders of District Attorney Joseph Moore or for those of the prosecuting attorney for the Southern Lumber Operators Association, Congressman A. P. Pujo, but the Court still refused and ordered the nine men to trial for the murder of the lumber trust gunman, A. P. Vincent, who was killed in the battle at Grabow, La., when the mass meeting of the Brotherhood and its farmer allies was fired on from ambush by the private thug army of the Association on the 7th of last July.….

[Emphasis and paragraph breaks added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Nine Members of Brotherhood of Timber Workers Now on Trial in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana” →

Hellraisers Journal: Shall Emerson Die?-President of Brotherhood of Timber Workers Jailed in Lake Charles, Louisiana

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote BBH re BTW LA White n Black Unity, ISR p106 , Aug 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday August 24, 1912
Jay Smith, Secretary of B. of T. W., Appeals for Funds to Save Fellow Workers

From Pittsburg (Kansas) Labor Herald of August 16, 1912:

Shall Emerson Die?
———-

[Letter from Jay Smith, B. of T. W. Secretary]

A. I. Emerson, Pres BTW, Cmg Ntn p6, Aug 24, 1912

Brother, Comrades, Fellow-workers:

On Sunday evening, July 7, 1912, while the Brotherhood of Timber Workers were holding a mass meeting on the public road at Grabow, La., thugs concealed in the office of the Galloway Lumber Co., fired upon our people with rifles and pump guns loaded with buck-shot. When the firing ceased, three men were found to be killed outright, several mortally and seriously wounded and thirty-odd others injured, the great majority being union men. Immediately following the “riot”, as it was called by the capitalists class, President A. L. Emerson, who was our chief speaker on the occasion, and other members of the Brotherhood, were arrested, denied bail, and placed in the county jail at Lake Charles, La., which prison is totally inadequate to accommodate the number of men now confined there, and is in a deplorably unsanitary condition, besides. Despite the condition of this prison, sick and wounded men are confined there, the authorities giving the excuse that there is no room in the I hospital for them and our boys are still being arrested.

This, so far, is the outcome of the “riot” at Grabow. That our boys were neither looking for nor expecting any such trouble is borne witness to by the fact that many of them had taken along their women and children, and, that none of the last were killed by the Trusts gunmen, is a miracle.

All the news and evidence so far reported shows that our men were not only ambushed, but that the “riot” had been carefully planned by the Lumber Trust, and we have every reason to believe, that hidden in the offices of the Galloway Lumber Co., were gunmen who had been sent over from other places by the Southern Operators’ Association. The “riot” was but the culmination of a long series of outrages against the Brotherhood and all other Union labor, and was staged by the Operators’ Association for the purpose of crushing out the unions in the Southern timber districts and terrorizing its workers back into meek submission into peonage. This has been the boasted purpose of the Operators’ Association: “To crush all union labor out of their mills and camps, drive all Socialist speakers out of their towns, and run things as they damned please.”

For twenty long months we have fought this mighty and merciless combination of capital, this vicious combine of grafters and gunmen, and, because they have not been able to whip us back into their mills and slave pens, they have planned the massacre of Grabow, and, failing there to kill our President Emerson and his bravest associates, they have taken him and them to jail and are preparing to stage another legal murder.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Shall Emerson Die?-President of Brotherhood of Timber Workers Jailed in Lake Charles, Louisiana” →