The Humboldt Herald

Cops clashed with timber workers 72 years ago today at the Holmes-Eureka mill, site of the current Bayshore Mall.

A lumber strike had ensued for five weeks and culminated with the deaths of striking workers shot by police gunfire on June 21, 1935.

Before the strike, timber workers toiled 10-hour days, 6-days a week for 35¢ an hour. Union organizers traveled the Pacific Northwest to win reasonable work hours and better pay.

Eureka was a different ballgame in 1935 but one thing was the same. There were two newspapers – the Humboldt Times and the Humboldt Standard – both of which published front page editorials against the strike. According to The Great Lumber Strike of Humboldt County 1935 by Frank Onstine, “there was little actual violence (before the morning of June 21, 1935, but) the press was eager to convince the public that Eureka was on the verge of anarchy.”

Indeed, strikebreakers were escorted to work and city officials threatened to call the National Guard. Bosses pressured workers to sign “loyalty oaths” to the companies that employed them, and the newspapers published the oaths.

On the morning of June 21, 1935, strikers gathered at the Holmes-Eureka mill. It might have been like any other strike until the police chief rode his car into the crowd while shooting his gun at the ground yelling "who's going to stop me." Someone inside the chief's car shot tear gas at the picketers knocking a woman to the ground striking fear that she’d been hit by a shotgun.

Thinking the cops had killed a picketer, strikers charged the cops with a “hail of rocks,” causing police to unleash gunfire. Patrolman Harry Albee emptied his pistol through the windshield, but didn’t know how to work the submachine gun stashed in the trunk. He employed the help of a non-striking worker, Ernest Watkins, “a young Holmes-Eureka employee [who] proceeded to open fire.” The gun jammed within a few rounds, ending the worker-on-worker shooting.

Three strikers died on scene while others succumbed to their wounds in the following days and weeks.

Multiple trials in Superior Court failed to convict strikers of any wrongdoing despite false evidence paraded about by the cops and the Humboldt Standard. No charges were filed in the deaths of the workers, according to a September 3, 1995 Times-Standard article.

Multiple trials in Superior Court failed to convict strikers of any wrongdoing despite false evidence paraded about by the cops and the Humboldt Standard. No charges were filed in the deaths of the workers, according to a September 3, 1995 Times-Standard article.

Multiple trials in Superior Court failed to convict strikers of any wrongdoing despite false evidence paraded about by the cops and the Humboldt Standard. No charges were filed in the deaths of the workers, according to a September 3, 1995 Times-Standard article.

Multiple trials in Superior Court failed to convict strikers of any wrongdoing despite false evidence paraded about by the cops and the Humboldt Standard. No charges were filed in the deaths of the workers, according to a September 3, 1995 Times-Standard article.

Multiple trials in Superior Court failed to convict strikers of any wrongdoing despite false evidence paraded about by cops and the Humboldt Standard. No charges were filed in the deaths of the workers.

Multiple trials in Superior Court failed to convict strikers of any wrongdoing despite false evidence paraded about by the cops and the Humboldt Standard. No charges were filed in the deaths of the workers, according to a September 3, 1995 Times-Standard article.

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