100 years ago in Spokane: Gunfire reported in Hillyard as rail strike tensions escalate

A shot was fired through the window of the Great Northern railway shops in Hillyard, signaling a serious new phase in the long-running rail shopmen’s strike.

No one was injured, but suspicion immediately fell on strikers “not in sympathy with new employees who are doing the work of the striking shop craft men.”

In a separate incident in Hillyard, one strikebreaker said he was being followed by a crowd of young men while he walked from work to his streetcar stop. He was frightened, so he pulled a gun and waved it in a threatening manner toward the crowd.

A police officer heard the crowd cry, “He’s got a gun!” The officer rushed to the scene, arrested the strikebreaker, took away his gun, and led him to jail. He gave his address as Detroit, Michigan.

From the high school beat: The Spokane School Board was soliciting suggestions for a new name for North Central High School.

Why?

“Because the present title had a purely local significance and did not make the impression on the mind of the stranger that the name Lewis and Clark did,” said one board member.

The Spokesman-Review invited its readers to suggest new names and promised to print them in subsequent editions.

As nearly everyone in Spokane today can deduce, this renaming plan never came to fruition.

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1969: Woodstock Festival opens in Bethel, New York, with performances from Richie Havens, Tim Hardin, Ravi Shankar, Melanie, Arlo Guthrie and Joan Baez.