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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