Grave Past Rises People Come To Grips With The Centralia Massacre.

Nearly 80 years ago, on Nov. 11, 1919, an Armistice Day parade here ended in gunfire that killed four members of the local American Legion outside a union hall.

Vigilantes rounded up members of the leftist Industrial Workers of the World - “Wobblies” suspected in the shooting - and lynched one of them that night.

Then for decades, the town buttoned up and resolutely forgot the incident known as the Centralia Massacre. Local folk wouldn’t talk about it, there was nothing in the library about it, and schools didn’t include it in history lessons.

Over the weekend, the years of denial came to an end with the dedication of a mural about that dark period of Centralia history. The focus of the work is the lynched Wobbly, Wesley Everest, shown rising from his grave - arms raised, fists clenched, staring at the town statue of a World War I doughboy across the street.

The statue, called “The Sentinel,” is facing another direction and does not meet Everest’s gaze.

But their silent confrontation has been a subject of debate in this town and beyond.

“I think it should be taken down,” Chehalis resident R.L. Griswold said of the mural. “It will create trouble and hard feelings. The whole matter should have been buried a long time ago.”

Weighing in on the other side are survivors of Everest and the seven Wobblies sent to prison for their alleged roles in the shootings.

“I hope the truth will be told for a change,” said Esther Barnett Goffinet, an Idaho nurse whose father, Eugene Barnett, spent 11 years behind bars. She, however, went to college on an American Legion scholarship.

“I hate that the history books depict my dad as a murderer. He tried his whole life to clear his name.”

One of those pushing for the mural was John Regan, a businessman and owner of the Centralia Square Antique Mall, which donated an exterior wall for the work, although businessmen historically were not big fans of the Wobblies.

The past lives here.

Bob Stiles, commander of the downtown American Legion post, said his grandmother was Everest’s girlfriend.

Bill Henry, president of the Operating Engineers’ local and a supporter of the mural effort, said his great-grandfather sat on the jury that convicted the Wobblies.

Washington state was prime territory for the IWW, a radical group bent on organizing workers in shipyards, sawmills and lumberyards.

In 1916, two vigilantes and at least five Wobblies died in a shootout on the Everett waterfront. The IWW union hall was busted up here in 1918 by marchers in a Red Cross parade, and a blind man selling the Wobbly newspaper, among others, was hustled out of town by ruffians later that year.

By 1919, with Russia under Communist rule, the United States was in the grip of a “Red Scare.” Seattle’s general strike that February didn’t help.

On Nov. 11, local veterans of the Great War marched to commemorate the first anniversary of that conflict’s end. Some believe there were participants who also wanted to bust up the new IWW hall.

Warren Grimm led the local legionnaires. Some say Grimm was trying to turn his group around at the union hall. Others say he was leading an effort to break in.

In any event, the Wobblies killed him and three others.

Enraged townspeople rounded up the Wobblies and jailed them. That night, the power went out. Eight men entered the jail and took Everest - a World War I vet himself - to a bridge over the Chehalis River, where he was hanged, shot and possibly castrated.

Ten men were tried and seven convicted of second-degree murder in the legionnaires’ slayings. One died in prison, and the others were eventually paroled or pardoned.

Henry’s great-grandfather, William Inmon, was later among jurors who filed an affidavit saying the seven men were wrongly convicted.

In the aftermath, “it was very hush-hush,” Stiles said. “If you said anything, they told you to mind your own business.”

But the passions didn’t die.

The mural plan was condemned in a resolution passed by the American Legion at its national convention this year. The measure labels the Wobblies “assassins” and blames the mural on union leaders, college professors and Wobblies of today.

“Our contention has always been that these men (legionnaires) were unarmed. … These men were murdered in cold blood,” said William Fortson, adjutant for the legion in Washington state.

The local legion post is staying out of the controversy. Still, Stiles said, “I kind of wish they hadn’t painted that stuff to stir up dust.”

The mural was painted by a New Jersey artist, peace and labor activist Mike Alewitz. Several locals helped.

Everest is shown half-clothed in his Army uniform and half in workmen’s overalls. The blind newspaper vendor is there and myriad black cats, a symbol of the IWW.

“If it were just a pretty picture and people went on, we didn’t do our job,” Henry said.