Today -100: June 26, 1923: Of elevateds, lynchings, and unveilings

Pres. Harding says Prohibition will never be repealed. He warns that if states fail to enforce it, which “amounts to a confession by the State that it does not choose to govern itself,” there will need to be an expensive, intrusive federal police. He doesn’t utter NY Gov. Alfred E. Smith’s name, but he doesn’t have to.

Smith refuses to respond.

An elevated train jumps the tracks in Brooklyn, falling 35 feet to the ground, killing 7.

See that car the carriage fell on? Its owner, one Douglas Fonda, and his passenger got out without a scratch. One of the passengers of the first carriage that fell, Lewis Awell, president of a paint company, wandered home badly injured. He was carrying $200,000 worth of securities. Another survivor was worried about some diamonds she left on the train. There was a whole lot of money for a, you know, El train.

The blame game begins, with Mayor John Hylan rushing to the scene within 15 minutes and blaming the wreck on old wooden guard rails and the Transit Commission should be fired. Commissioner Le Roy T. Harkness says

Hylan’s claim that the rails were 25 years old is nonsense.

The NAACP reports that the number of lynchings is way down, 11 in the first 6 months of 1923 compared to 33 in the first 6 months of 1922. 3 in Florida, 2 in Georgia, 1 each in Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas.

A fight in Eisleben, Saxony between “Nationalists” (Nazis? maybe) and Communists at the unveiling of a statue to assassinated foreign minister Walter Rathenau leaves 2 dead.

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