Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “Tulsa, November 9th” – First-Hand Account from Secretary of IWW Local

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Don’t worry, Fellow Worker,
all we’re going to need
from now on is guts.
-Frank Little

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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday April 11, 1918
From The Liberator – I. W. W. Secretary on Tulsa Mob Violence

Tulsa, November 9th

WWIR, IWW Flog Tar Feather, Morn Tulsa Dly Wld, Nov 10, 1917

[EDITOR’S NOTE:-In this story of persecution and outrage at Tulsa, Oklahoma, told in the sworn statement of one of the victims, there is direct and detailed evidence of one of the most menacing by-products of the war. Here in Tulsa, as in Bisbee and Butte and Cincinnati, patriotic fervor was used by employers with the connivance or open co-operation of local officials, as a mask for utterly lawless attacks upon workingmen who attempted to organize for better conditions. This false resort to loyalty on the part of certain war profiteers is emphasized in the recent report of the President’s Mediation Commission. These cowardly masked upper-class mobs, calling themselves “Knights of Liberty” and mumbling hypocritical words about “the women and children of Belgium,” will not succeed in terrorizing the labor movement of America, nor will they tend to make it more patriotic.]

On November 9, 1917, seventeen men, taken from the custody of the city police of Tulsa, Oklahoma, were whipped, tarred and feathered, and driven out of the city with a warning never to return.

In a letter dated December 21, a resident* of Tulsa, writes:

I think it is only fair to say that the bottom cause of this trouble locally was that a few men, presumably belonging the I. W. W. came into the oil fields something like a year ago and were meeting with considerable success in getting oil-field workers-especially pipe-line and tank builders-to fight for better wages and shorter hours.

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Hellraisers Journal: Night of Terror in Tulsa: IWWs Taken From Jail, Whipped & Tarred by “Knights of Liberty”

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Strangle the I. W. W.’s.
Kill them, just as you would kill
any other kind of a snake.
Don’t scotch ’em; kill ’em.
And kill ’em dead.
The Tulsa Daily World

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Hellraisers Journal, Monday November 12, 1917
Tulsa, Oklahoma – Fellow Workers Face Night of Terror

From The Tulsa Daily World of November 10, 1917:

WWIR, IWW Flog Tar Feather, Morn Tulsa Dly Wld, Nov 10, 1917

Three automobile loads of I. W. W.’s, in charge of policemen, were halted on Boulder avenue, near Archer, last night at 11 o’clock by a crowd of men garbed in long black robes and wearing black masks. The officers were forced to drive their prisoners to a secluded spot west of Irving Place, where, with impressive ceremonies each of the I. W. W.’s was lashed with a cat-o’-nine-tails. Then a coat of hot tar was applied to the bleeding back and feathers applied.

With each stroke of the brush the black-robed man in charge of the ceremony uttered the words:

“In the name of the outraged women and children of Belgium.”

With nothing on but their trousers the men were started toward the Osage hills. Hundreds of rifle and revolver shots were fired in the air and they sped into the inky darkness of the night.

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