 |
| Damage from Bombing |
The Foiled Bomb Plot at
2132 R Street, NW
2132 R Street, NW
The image at left, captured in front of the elegant house at 2132 R Street, N.W. on June 2,
1919, first appeared on the front page of the now defunct Evening Star
newspaper under a headline that shocked many in Washington at the time:
Explosion at Attorney General’s Home Starts a Nation-Wide Round-Up of
Anarchists.[1] The bombing occurred in front of the home of
U.S. Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer, who had been the intended
recipient of the package bomb, which in all likelihood would have been successful
if the bomber had not tripped on a series of iron wickets lining the front
entrance of the home, blowing himself and his identity into thousands of
pieces.
What
prompted such a dramatic event on the peaceful 2100 block of R Street 93 years? The perceived threat
of Communists “Reds.” Worried by the
revolution that had taken place in Russia, Palmer became convinced that
Communist agents were planning to overthrow the American government. His suspicions intensified at about 11 pm on
June 2, 1919 when he was sitting between the upstairs windows of his home along
with other government officials when the bomb went off outside. Uninjured, Palmer rushed outside to find no
remains of the Italian assassin, but instead floating propaganda from his
destroyed suitcase that read: “There will be bloodshed; we will not
dodge; there will have to be murder; we will kill, because it is necessary; we
will destroy to rid the world of your tyrannical institutions.” In all, a
total of thirty-eight bombs had been sent to leading
politicians throughout the country.
 |
| Alexander M. Palmer |
The
Evening Star reporting from over eighty
years ago brings to mind the contemporary criticisms of newsprint and
television journalism as being too sensational.
The story was divided up into several stories, as it was in the Washington
Post the following day.
Warning! The
following is not for the faint at heart!
(you can skip safely to the next
paragraph).
The
reports read in parts: “Fragments of the anarchist’s body were literally driven
into the back of the trees, the woodwork of nearby houses, scattered over the
pavements and smeared on the front roofs of houses, while a large portion of
the man’s torso was found hanging to the cornice of a house on S Street a block
from the spot where the explosion occurred.
A part of the man’s liver was found on the top of an automobile standing
nearly 100 feet away.” “John Bryn, 14,
son of the Norwegian Minister, was asleep in 2137 R Street when a section of
the “Red’s” spinal column smashed through the window and landed beside his
bed.” “The enormous force of the
explosion…was most clearly shown in the distance in which pieces of the
scattered remains were hurled. The legs
were found across the street from Mr. Palmer’s home. The scalp reposed on S Street, to which it
had to rise 50 feet in the air and transverse a distance of more than 75
yards.” Adding to the yawning house
fronts where doors had been blown from their hinges and the litter of glass and
leaves in front of the houses, was a spectacle of hundreds of minute flesh
pieces covering the street and adhering in ghastly fashion to the fronts of
dwellings and doors.” “Cleaners and
window washers were put to work after headquarters had collected all the
remains needful.”
 |
| 2132 R Street in 2012 |
Instead of Palmer going after the
person or persons whom directly planned the bombing, he went after everyone who
had any association with suspected Communist ties. They discovered that most Communists or
‘Reds’ were usually immigrants, therefore they found immigration laws that they
could easily work under to arrest these persons. Palmer looked to arrest all members of these
groups, with a plan to arrest large numbers of unsuspecting
persons at one time, thus gaining the name ‘Palmer Raids’ which began after his
bombing in the spring of 1919.
Copyright Paul K. Williams
No comments:
Post a Comment