Getting new blog posts by email

Google is killing that Feedburner function sometime in July, because reasons. I've added a new get-posts-by-email thing in the column to the right, from something called follow.it. If you want to continue/start getting posts in your inbox, enter your email address there.

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Today -100: June 30, 1921: We need to know the whereabouts of these people

Northern Ireland Prime Minister Sir James Craig rejects Éamon de Valera’s request for a meeting (which de V initially sent to a different Unionist politician named Sir James Craig).

The Dáil Éireann authorizes reprisals against British reprisals. A house for a house.

The House of Representatives votes 330-4 for the Borah Amendment in favor of calling naval limitation negotiations with Britain and Japan.

Winston Churchill’s mother Jennie, aka Lady Randolph Churchill, dies. The story is on page 12, which is odd since her leg being amputated was front-page news earlier this month.

The Cuban Senate votes against women’s suffrage. 

US Secretary of Labor James Davis wants to track immigrants, “not to regulate him, but to help him, to teach him, and encourage him. We need to know the whereabouts of these people, if it is only to protect them from the insidious poison of Red propaganda.”

A Lake County, Illinois jury takes 20 hours to convict a hotel owner of violating Prohibition law, because that’s how long it took for them to consume the evidence, 3 quarts of whiskey and 1 of port.

No, I’m not going to read the op-ed about how vivisection is “vindicated.”

I thought we’d heard the opinion of every person on earth about the Dempsey-Carpentier match, but... George Bernard Shaw thinks Carpentier will win.

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Today -100: June 29, 1921: Ultra-modern, to say the least

Éamon de Valera resonds to Lloyd George’s call to confer in London, saying he will need to consult with... “the political minority” or Ireland, i.e., the Unionists. He also says no lasting peace can be achieved if LG insists on dividing Ireland and rejecting “the principle of national self-determination.” De Valera also writes to Northern Ireland Prime Minister Sir James Craig and other Unionist leaders proposing talks with them.

West Virginia Gov. Ephraim Morgan orders the sheriff of Mingo County to draft 130 men (or accept volunteers) for 60 days to fight the miners. WV has no National Guard.

An address to the National Social Conference describes how a man was once cured of hysterical blindness by the Industrial Commission of New York by letting him remain with the woman he was living with in bigamy after leaving his “unkind” wife. A delegate to the conference says of the address, “It was ultra-modern, to say the least.” The person who gave the address was Frances Perkins.

Sports Headline of the Day -100:  

The NYT won’t shut up about the upcoming Dempsey-Carpentier fight, and evidently neither will professors at the Sorbonne.

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Today -100: June 28, 1921: Of beer and low confidence

The House of Representatives votes 250-93 to ban doctors prescribing beer and to restrict prescriptions for liquor to one pint every 10 days.

Giovanni Giolitti resigns as Italian prime minister after receiving only a marginal vote of confidence (234-200) on his foreign policy.

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Today -100: June 27, 1921: War in three years

Éamon de Valera has received the invitation from Lloyd George, although it appeared in the newspapers before the letter reached him. I’m just curious what address they mailed it to. De Valera will consult with the Dáil Éireann before deciding whether accept, possibly with conditions, and definitely with some associates, preferably ones the British will have to release from prison to attend. Ulster PM Sir James Craig is also mulling it over, and may insist on his own pre-conditions, like no consideration of an Irish republic.

The Upper Silesia crisis has been declared over, with both German and Polish forces agreeing to withdraw.

At the annual convention of Spiritualists at the Waldorf-Astoria, clairvoyant John Slater calls for an amendment to the Constitution to protect mediums from prosecution (in 1930 Slater will win in court after a clergyman has him charged for making predictions, which was illegal under Michigan law). He complains that rich Spiritualists don’t donate much to the cause, because Spiritualism “takes away the fear of Hell and they are no longer afraid to die rich.”

Trotsky supposedly told the 3rd congress of the Communist International that the US and Britain would be in a naval war by 1924.

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Today -100: June 26, 1921: Every imaginable sacrifice

The (presumably all-white) grand jury investigating the Tulsa race war indicts the chief of police, John Gustafson, and some other cops. Not actually for the race war, but for failure to enforce prohibition and firearm laws and to suppress vice, and something about stolen cars. Other than that, the grand jury report blames black people for the race war, I mean it puts ALL of the blame on them, because of course it fucking does. See, it started because blacks showed up armed at the court house to prevent a lynching, but, see, all those white people milling around the court house didn’t intend anything of the kind, they were just there for, I don’t know, cotton candy or something. The grand jury finds the underlying cause to be the spread of “racial equality” doctrine among blacks.

Georgia Gov. Hugh Dorsey, on his last day in office, says there have been 58 lynchings during his 4 years in office and in most cases there was no effort to bring members of the lynch mob to justice. He has suggestions about reforms that could deal with this, including a state-level constabulary and grand jury. Incoming governor Thomas Hardwick’s inaugural message responds to that and to the recent federal investigations of peonage in Georgia, saying the white farmer “has made every imaginable sacrifice to help the negro,” presumably not counting the white farmer who murdered all those black people on his plantation. Hardwick says “the indictment of the whole State and all of its people for mistreating the black race is an unspeakable slander upon our State and her people”.

Greece declines the Allies’ offer to mediate an end to their war with Turkish nationalists.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George asks Éamon de Valera to come to London, with a plus one, for a conference with the British government and Northern Irish Prime Minister Sir James Craig “to explore to the utmost the possibility of a settlement.” Under the threat of martial law being declared and a major increase in military occupation on... wait for it.... July the 12th.

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Today -100: June 25, 1921: Live and never die

De Valera really was arrested and released, as confirmed by Sinn Féin. 

D.D. Murphy, leader of the black cult Live and Never Die, is shot dead by the Atlantic City police after a shoot-out.

A train containing some of King George’s escort for the opening of the Ulster Parliament earlier this week, the Tenth Hussars, is derailed by an IRA mine, killing 3 soldiers and a guard. 2 IRA are shot dead as are a bunch of injured horses.

In the Italian parliament, new deputy Benito Mussolini talks about annexing the Italian-speaking parts of Switzerland.

Assholes of the Day -100:  Whoever keep breaking into Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan’s house in Forest Hills and stealing stuff.

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Today -100: June 24, 1921: Of jackasses, final phases, and professional labor leaders

Rear Adm. William Sims gave a speech a couple of weeks ago in London, which everyone has been going on (and on and on) about ever since, in which he called American supporters of Sinn Féin jackasses, among other things (although he claims he’s been misquoted). He arrived back in the US yesterday, recalled so he can explain himself. There’s a heavy police presence at the port of New York to prevent him being mobbed.

Supposedly, the police finally capture Éamon de Valera, more or less accidentally in County Dublin, and then... let him go.

Chief Secretary for Ireland Sir Hamar Greenwood tells a group of Crown forces (presumably cops + soldiers) that the final phase of the struggle in Ireland is beginning. He says the Crown forces have no quarrel with the Irish people but wish to rescue them from the criminal minority which holds life cheaply and is opposed to civilization.

Future vice president Charles G. Dawes arrives in Washington to take up the post of director of the Budget Bureau, which Harding created. He complains loudly and bitterly that Congress hasn’t given him enough funding to properly fulfill what he sees as his task, which is to examine every penny of government expenditure and make cuts so that taxes on his fellow businessmen can be reduced. Disdaining having to “take his chances” on whatever civil servants are assigned to him, he wants to invite businessmen to come to Washington to advise him (without compensation) for four months.

T.H. Watkins, president of the Pennsylvania Coal and Coke Company, says he won’t be dealing with the United Mine Workers union anymore, because employers now understand their responsibility, so there’s no need anymore for “the professional labor leader.”

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Today -100: June 23, 1921: Stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation

Headline of the Day -100:  

And if there are two things the Irish are famously good at, it’s forgiving and forgetting.

The king thinks the model for “self-government” paving the way for healing division is... South Africa.

French Royalists have been getting into street fights. Members of the Camelots du Roi, for example, beat up a Latin Quarter café singer who sang a song which “somewhat reflected upon the private character” of Joan of Arc.

The American Federation of Labor convention passes a resolution of sympathy for the Irish, but Samuel Gompers prevents a motion for a boycott of English goods being attached.

Crime in Paris has increased so much, supposedly, that cops are now ordered to carry guns during the day.

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Today -100: June 22, 1921: Of banning Asians, banning Communists, and burning castles

The American Federation of Labor’s convention officially supports the exclusion of all Orientals from the United States. There is a fight in the convention over a proposal to boycott Britain over its policy in Ireland.

The Prussian minister of interior bans Communists from office in Prussia, down to the village level.

The Earl of Bandon, who is a former deputy lieutenant of County Cork and, of course, a Unionist, is kidnapped by the IRA, who also burn down his Castle Bernard.

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Today -100: June 21, 1921: Of sewers, smoking, lynchings, and vamps

In preparation for the visit of the king and queen to Belfast, police are inspecting the sewers for bombs, as was the custom.

Rep. Paul Johnson (D-Miss.) introduces a bill to criminalize smoking by women in the District of Columbia.

A mob near Jackson, Mississippi, lynches a young black convict who, while a trustie (sorry, spell-check: that’s how it was spelled in 1921), is alleged to have attacked a white woman.

Theda Bara is to marry director Charles Brabin.

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Today -100: June 20, 1921: Kings on the move

Britain, France and Italy try to persuade Greece to end its war with the Turkish nationalists, offering their “mediation” services. They’re hoping that Greece being forced to back down will also force King Constantine (currently visiting the front in Smyrna) out of power.

Everyone seems pretty sure former Austro-Hungarian emperor Charles will make another attempt to enter Hungary and become king on August 20th.

King George is going to Belfast Wednesday to open the Ulster Parliament, and a few rules for Belfasthoovians have been issued: no one can use their roof without a permit, saloons will have to close, etc etc.

Oh good, an innovation in lynching (McCormick, South Carolina): 

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Today -100: June 19, 1921: Of admissions, kluxers, dances, and newsies

Headline of the Day -100:  

2,000 idiots are inducted into the Ku Klux Klan near Cincinnati. 

Wellesley College expels four students for the crime of attending a townie dance without a chaperone. The dance was a reception to announce the engagement of one of the students. The father of one of the women says they have much livelier dances in Chicago. I don’t doubt it.

Harding refuses to grant D.C. public employees a half-day on Saturdays.

Automobiling etiquette is very important. So when former secretary of state Robert Lansing’s car (unclear if he or a chauffeur is driving it) knocks down a 12-year-old newsboy, tearing his pants and scattering his papers, Lansing graciously gives him two whole dollars to make good the damages, and speeds off.

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Today -100: June 18, 1921: Human

“The Reichstag is growing human,” begins a NYT article about a fist fight between Communist deputy Hermann Remmele and a nationalist (DNVP?) deputy named Mittlemann, who had agreed with another deputy who said Communists aren’t Germans and should all be killed. A general tumult ensues for several hours.

Sinn Feiners (presumably) destroy railroad signal boxes, wires, and signal cabins in London suburbs.

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Today -100: June 17, 1921: We’ll keep an eye on the men too

Supposedly, Bolshevism has “broken out” in the Polish forces in Upper Silesia.

A white mob in Autreyville, Georgia burn several houses and a negro church, presumably because they were pissed off that last week they failed to lynch a black man accused of killing a white girl last week (they will lynch him on Saturday, after he’s brought back to town for trial, a trial which seems to have been as fast, with a verdict as inevitable, as was the custom).

Ironic Headline of the Day -100:  

Chicago Beach Superintendant William Burkhardt, who last year told women bathers “Let your conscience be your guide” about bathing costumes, announces that they didn’t have a conscience and so he’s imposing rules: knickers to within 4 inches above the knees and skirts two inches below that, and one-quarter sleeves. “We’ll keep an eye on the men too,” he says.

There are no laws in the US (state or federal) preventing people flying unsafe airplanes.

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Today -100: June 16, 1921: Of machine guns, kings, horses, and glands

US customs agents intercept 600 Tommy guns (down to 495 in tomorrow’s paper) which were to be shipped from Hoboken to Ireland.

British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill’s plans for the Middle East, including installing Emir Faisal as King of Mesopotamia (after a plebiscite), are not being well received by the French, who deposed him as king of Syria last year. Churchill also plans to make Faisal’s brother Abdullah king of Transjordan.

Churchill’s other plan is that when most British troops leave Mesopotamia, 30,000 of their horses will be slaughtered.

A NY judge postpones sentencing a 36-year-old woman burglar until she has some sort of glandular treatment that’s supposed to cure her criminal tendencies.

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Today -100: June 15, 1921: Figures he’d be against “too much fun”

The US occupation authorities in Santo Domingo say they’ll withdraw in 8 months – if the Dominican people cooperate. Also, independence doesn’t look very independent, with the Republic expected to take on a large loan, overseen by an American overseer, with a police overseen by American officers, all this ratified by a convention named by the US military...

Retired Gen. Karl Höfer and his German irregular forces in Upper Silesia flatly refuse Allied orders to leave, even after Polish forces obeyed.

Maj. Roy Haynes, the Federal Prohibition Commissioner (in the Treasury) asks for Prohibition enforcement to be given a fair chance “without having too much fun poked at them” by newspapers, movies, playwrights, etc. Anything other than strict observance of the stupid law “means chaos, means Bolshevism.”

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Today -100: June 14, 1921: Of privileged positions, zeppelins, scurrilous stories, and poker

Pope Benedict complains about “the privileged position enjoyed by the Jews in Palestine, which is dangerous for Christians.”

The House of Representatives votes 305-61 to end the state of war with Germany and Austria. This differs from the Senate version in not also repealing the 1917 declarations of war.

Headline of the Day -100:  

And yes, I do want it to blow up just so I can write “Oh the humanité.”

Col. John Russell, the commander of the Marines occupying Haiti, bans “scurrilous” articles or speeches attacking the Marines or the Haitian president or government. Offenders will be tried by US courts-martial because Russell says Haitian courts aren’t up to the job of prosecuting people for libel or inciting rebellion because the next revolution might bring those people to power, “where they would be in a position to take bloody vengeance upon the Judge and members of the court.”

Scotland Yard has been raiding clubs to stop poker-playing. Poker players object that it is not gambling but a game of skill and anyway private clubs are private.

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Today -100: June 13, 1921: Dirty arms and the man

No links today, NYT website screwup.

A lynch mob in Moorestown, New Jersey fails to find a black man suspected of murdering a 7-year-old girl. They do find another black man at the train station and beat him pretty severely until people who knew the suspect convince them they’ve got the wrong guy.

A production of Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man in Vienna is disrupted by Bulgarians who (correctly) think it insults Bulgarians (A quote: “Bulgarians of really good standing—people in OUR position—wash their hands nearly every day.”). Eventually the Viennese get them to shut up.

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Today -100: June 12, 1921: Of feet, rum raids, mail horses, and scarey squirrels

Lady Randolph Churchill, aka Jennie, Winston’s mother, has her right leg (not foot, as the article says) amputated after falling down, breaking her ankle, and getting blood poisoning. For some reason this is front-page news.

The House of Representatives adopts a rule allowing the resolution declaring peace with Germany and Austria-Hungary, when it is voted on Monday, to be adopted with no amendments. Democrats object to this as forcing wholesale acceptance of a resolution which was decided upon secretly by Republican members of the Foreign Affairs Committee. 

Headline of the Day -100:  

This is in New York County. That one conviction, by the way, was someone who first pled guilty, then realized everyone was being acquitted and changed his plea, but of course he’d already admitted his guilt in court.

An anti-prohibition parade in Greenpoint, led by the mayor, had banners and floats. “On one float was a blacksmith in a forlorn attitude beside a neglected sledge hammer and an empty glass. This was entitled ‘Thinking’ in large letters.”

The NAACP reveals that Col. John Russell, commander of the US Marines occupying Haiti, arrested two editors and bans newspapers reprinting US newspaper stories about complaints about Marines in Haiti.

A mob of “vigilantes” force 100 or so foreign-born coal miners out of Francisco, Indiana. Plus another hundred who were working on railroad construction near Oakland City.

The Post Office plans to bar the use of unfit horses to carry the mail after a ruling that the arrest of a mail wagon driver for animal cruelty does not constitute unlawfully obstructing the mail.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: June 11, 1921: Of murders, banned bikes, and insolent Germans

Eva Kaber confesses to the murder of her husband Daniel Kaber in 1919 in Lakewood, Ohio. She is under indictment along with her daughter and her mother. She says he mistreated her, so she and a spiritualist concocted a plot to hire two men, who were under instructions not to kill him but to give him a shaking to drive out his ghosts – possibly while pretending to be ghosts themselves? – and convince him to be nicer to her. Instead, they stabbed him to death, 24 times. Eva had also been giving her (paralyzed) husband what she claims she was told was medicine but was in fact arsenic, provided by the medium. It’s all a bit complicated, including Pinkertons hired by Daniel’s father, one of the stabbers being tracked down and prosecuted in Italy, etc., but the three-generations-under-arrest thing is pretty impressive, in a Lifetime movie sort of way, although only Eva went to prison. The fortune teller was acquitted, but later went to jail for providing arsenic to another murderer.

The British are considering imposing martial law on Dublin. And banning bicycles, because they got nothin’.

Headline of the Day -100:  

This insolence consists of marrying women in Alsace-Lorraine, thereby acquiring French citizenship.

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Today -100: June 10, 1921: No Jew has succeeded in getting the better of Mr. Ford

Mexican Pres. Álvaro Obregón says any treaty with the US has to come after the US recognizes the Mexican government, not as a precondition.

Roderick McLean, who tried to shoot Queen Victoria in 1882, dies in Broadmoor Asylum, where he’s been ever since.

Henry Ford sends a letter to Ford officials denying rumors about the turbulence of the Ford Company earlier in the year and about why he hates Jews, denying that it’s because they refused him loans. “No Jew has succeeded in getting the better of Mr. Ford.” The letter says “There is no attack and no campaign against the Jews” because Jewish influence is strong enough to crush anyone who discusses the Jewish question, while “Jewish leaders have gone from one excess to another.”

The Coalition Government in Britain keeps losing by-elections. In Heywood and Radcliffe (Lancashire), a by-election called when the MP and former postmaster-general was made a peer is won, amusingly enough, by a farm worker employed by that peer, Walter Halls (Lab.). And in Westminster St. George’s, the coalition candidate is defeated by James Erskine of the Anti-Waste League, which was created in January by newspaper tycoon Lord Rothermere. The anti-waste thing is supposed to appeal to women voters.

The British government publishes what it claims is the text of a draft treaty from a year ago between Russia and the Irish Republic, which may or may not be real, but anyway never went anywhere.

D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love is finally published in the UK.

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Today -100: June 9, 1921: I didn’t murder her; I only shot her

Babe Ruth serves a one-day jail sentence for speeding (2nd offence), actually serving just 4½ hours and leaving in time to drive his “maroon, torpedo-shaped machine” to the Polo Grounds to join a game in the 6th inning. And yes, he was speeding to get his $500 a game fee (plus a rumored $500 per home run), but he isn’t caught this time.

The RNC reduces the number of delegates from the South in future National Republican Conventions by 40% from the 1912 convention, in line with their being so few actual Republican voters in the South. Southern delegates have often been black; one, Henry Lincoln Johnson of Georgia, suggests that instead of this, the party could demand its members of Congress actually enforce voting rights. What a kidder.

Utah’s cigarette ban goes into effect.

Oddly, two people were arrested this week in relation to the murder of Rosa Luxemburg in January 1919. One was caught Monday trying to sell her watch. The other, Otto Runge, who the NYT thinks was a fugitive but actually served some months for his part in the murder, the only person ever held responsible for the Leibknicht-Luxemburg murders, was recognized Wednesday when he tried to sign on at a labor bureau in Berlin under a false name. When accused of being the person who murdered Luxemburg he supposedly said “No, I didn’t murder her; I only shot her.” So that’s okay then.

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Today -100: June 8, 1921: Of bindings, uneasy hats, bathing costumes, and detention

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes says recognition of Mexico would require it to sign a treaty “binding itself” to protect property rights, specifically US property rights, meaning oil.

The new Northern Ireland Parliament meets for the first time.  40 members, all Unionists, show up. The Sinn Féiners and Nationalists, of course, do not. “The members of Parliament wore new glossy silk hats, which made them appear uneasy.” There are two women members; “They took the oath with their hats on.”

Atlantic City politicians are worried about the increasingly strong opinions about bathing costumes: “The last thing the officials want to see is a definite line-up of the newly enfranchised women, with the younger women demanding more freedom on the beach, and the older, but more influential, insisting upon a continuation of the present rules.”

Oklahoma Attorney General S.P. Freeling files the first charges related to the Tulsa race war and wouldn’t you know it, all four charged are black. Also, all black people found on the streets of Tulsa without identification, starting tomorrow, will be put in the detention camp.

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Today -100: June 7, 1921: Of spectacles

Pueblo, Colorado conscripts all able-bodied men to dig the city out of the mud after that big ol’ flood.

Pres. Harding makes an unscheduled stop on his motoring trip at Lincoln University, a black college. He tells the graduating class that education is important for blacks, because the government isn’t going to do jack shit for them: “No government can wave a magical wand and take a race from bondage to citizenship in half a century.” Well not with that attitude, mister. “The colored race, in order to come into its own, must do the great work itself in preparing for that participation,” he says, accepting the premise that most black people are not already “prepared” for citizenship by the fact that they are, you know, citizens. He refers to Tulsa (for the first time) as “the unhappy and distressing spectacle that we saw the other day out in one of the Western States” and hopes that “God grant that, in the soberness, the fairness and the justice of this country, we shall never have another spectacle like it.” So that’s it. He can’t even name the state, much less the city, where racial atrocities occurred, and offers as the only protection against future such... spectacles... the soberness, fairness and justice that did sooooo much for the black population of Tulsa.

In Somers Point, New Jersey, Commodore William Tanguy, age 70, volunteers to be the town bathing suit censor. He says he doesn’t need glasses and will even do it free. Sounds legit.

The British colonial regime in Sierra Leone and independent Liberia ratify a convention by which Liberian wives can be purchased for a maximum price of £5.

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Today -100: June 6, 1921: Of loop-the-crashes and flashing limbs

Laura Bromwell, aviator who held the world record for most loop-the-loops (199), dies. Guess what she was doing at the time.

As previously mentioned, Somers Point, New Jersey invited beach-goers who didn’t wish to subject themselves to Atlantic City’s bathing suit censors and did wish to wear one-piece bathing suits and nothing – dear god, nothing! – on their legs. And yesterday, Sunday, many “turned the bay front into a scene of flashing limbs and display of shapely forms.” Men (presumably) watched the beach from the bridge and from trees, “and there was a shortage of men at church services.”

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Today -100: June 5, 1921: Entire populations will take the chance of never awakening when they go bed at night

Pueblo, Colorado floods. I mean, really floods. A militia captain orders all looters shot, as was the custom.

The British are evidently threatening that if the southern Irish don’t agree to a settlement within a month, military repression will be intensified, the number of soldiers will be doubled, and 100,000 will be interned in concentration camps.

Somers Point, New Jersey invites bathers to come to its beaches to escape its rival Atlantic City’s puritanical rules. At Somers Point women can wear one-piece bathing suits and show bare legs (as opposed to hosiery) and everything.

The Army has a new poison gas, actually a liquid, 3 drops of which on someone’s skin will kill them within 30 seconds, according to Capt. L.D. Hutson, speaking at the Pennsylvania Military College. “Imagine what will happen to a city,” he says, drooling slightly, “when air squadrons begin spraying it with that terrible substance. In the next war machine guns and artillery will be out of date – the weapons will be gases and chemicals, and the humblest non-combatant will be exposed to attack. Entire populations will take the chance of never awakening when they go bed at night. It will truly,” he says with a visible erection, “be a war of extermination.”

The African Blood Brotherhood formally denies having started the Tulsa race riot, but head Cyril Briggs says at least it would show white people that blacks are not cowards and will fight back. 30 white Tulsans have been arrested for looting the burned-out negro district. One black hotel porter tells his manager that he’s feeling weak; turns out he was shot the day before but was afraid to mention it to anyone because he might be mistaken for a rioter and summarily executed.

The German war crimes court in Leipzig acquits a U-boat commander on charges of sinking a British hospital ship, because he was just, you know, following orders.

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Today -100: June 4, 1921: Of vagrants, ghost mommy’s victory, shells, and unpopular prohibition

Martial law is lifted in Tulsa. Some black people in the town – some rich guy, sheriff’s deputy Barney Cleaver, who seems to be something of an asshole – are saying that black agitators planned trouble for some time, and there’s supposedly proof that the African Blood Brotherhood set up a secret chapter in Tulsa. Mayor Thaddeus Evans issues an order for “all men... to either get a job and go to work” or be arrested as vagrants. The NAACP asks Harding to make a statement about the massacre already.

The British High Commissioner in Palestine, Sir Herbert Samuel, interprets the Balfour Declaration as saying Palestine will accept Jewish immigration only to the capacity of the area to absorb them, which at present isn’t very great. Also, no Bolshevik immigrants.

Soghomon Tehlirian is acquitted by a Berlin court for assassinating former Ottoman Grand Vizier Talaat Pasha in March. I guess that “my mother’s ghost told me to do it” defense works. There was also evidence introduced of Talaat’s part in the Armenian Genocide, and if there’s one thing Germans hate, it’s genocide. Tehlirian will die in San Francisco in 1960.

The House of Representatives would like the Senate’s proposal for naval disarmament talks to also include talks to reduce the size of armies.

The IRA close off a section of central Dublin and go house to house looking for three bank robbers. They don’t find them.

The IRA also set fire to the National Shell Factory in Dublin. Seems a dangerous place for the British to put a shell factory, if you ask me.

The Brooklyn Grand Jury dismisses another 82 Prohibition cases out of 90, for a total of 480 of the last 543.

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Today -100: June 3, 1921: Of white man’s countries, and ghost mommies

French forces, with tanks, intervene in the fight in Upper Silesia between Germans and Poles. Intervene against the Germans, obviously.

Authorities in Tulsa are claiming just 30 dead in the massacre. The emerging official narrative largely blames Tulsa police for losing control of the situation and not dispersing or shooting the black people who converged on the court house to prevent a lynching. That’s the crux of an address to a mass meeting – which I’m gonna guess was entirely white – by Adj. Gen. Charles Barrett, who’s in charge of martial law in the city. Barrett has banned funerals for those killed in the riot. Insurance companies are claiming that their policies don’t cover mob violence.

The NYT explains the racial “friction” in Oklahoma: “During the war Southern negroes flocked to the border State and found profitable employment. There has not been so much for them to do of late, and many of them are loafing on the streets. Not only the idle, shiftless and disorderly have worn out their welcome. It has become a common saying that ‘Oklahoma is a white man’s country.’” Presumably the NYT agrees with this, since it is evidently up to white people to decide when black people are “welcome” and up to black people to vanish back where they came from when the economy has less use for them. To continue: “When they had plenty of money to spend the negroes bought automobiles, lived high and claimed social privileges that the whites were not inclined to allow them. Drafted for service in France and praised for their patriotism, they naturally had a better opinion of themselves. All these things contributed to fan the flame of racial antagonism. .. the rough element among the whites was ripe for a rising to teach the negroes their place.” That “rising” was an attempt by blacks to organize to prevent a fucking lynching. And again, it is up to the white people to decide the “place” of black people; the only “racial antagonism” on evidence is white resentment of black people claiming social privileges (otherwise known as equal rights) and having a better opinion of themselves than white people have of them.

Soghomon Tehlirian, the Armenian on trial in Berlin for assassinating former Ottoman Grand Vizier Talaat Pasha in March, says he dreamed of the ghost of his mother ordering him to kill Pasha in retribution for the Armenian genocide, in which she and the rest of his family was killed.

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Today -100: June 2, 1921: Tulsa

The Greenwood/Tulsa Race Massacre. The whites of Tulsa, Oklahoma burn out the negro section, destroying 30 blocks of the city and shooting blacks trying to escape their burning houses. It started, as so many of these things do, with an accusation of assault by a black man, Dick Rowland, against a white woman – he tripped in an elevator and grabbed the arm of the elevator operator for balance, that’s it. He’s arrested; a white mob, spurred by headlines like “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator,” gathers at the court house; armed blacks show up to save Rowland from lynching; someone fires a shot, and away we go. Incidentally, the elevator operator will refuse to press charges and Rowland will leave town (along with many other black Tulsahoovians) and disappear from history. As of this first NYT story, the “race riot” is over, and 6,000 blacks are being held in makeshift detention camps. Tulsa police say racial animosity has been stirred up for months by the Wobblies.

Chief Secretary for Ireland Sir Hamar Greenwood tells Parliament that there just hadn’t been enough soldiers in Ireland to guard important buildings like the now smoldering Dublin Custom House. He says that reprisals can’t be ordered by any officer below Brigade Commander; I’m not sure when they stopped denying that reprisals were official policy.

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Today -100: June 1, 1921: Rum and paper do not mix

In addition to the almost daily reports of mistakes in the War Dept’s list of alleged WW I draft deserters, many cases have had to be dropped in federal court when it turns out the men had actually served or were too infirm to have passed a medical. Not that this will stop the War Dept from putting out error-ridden lists.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Sometime this month Booth Tarkington’s novel Alice Adams is published. It’s like a Jane Austen marriage plot novel set in a 1920s small town. ... Okay I’ve tried out that take on it and it doesn’t really work. Anyway, it’s short, so the Katharine Hepburn 1935 movie doesn’t cut anything out and is remarkably faithful right up to the last few minutes, where it has brighter conclusions to all the plot threads.

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