100 years after the Everett Massacre we’re still learning more
EVERETT — David Dilgard grew up listening to his grandfather croon Wobbly songs.
The folksy lyrics of battles and brotherhood were plenty catchy, even if he didn’t understand their meaning. He was too young to know that they were the words and ideas of the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical labor group advocating an end to capitalism.
Dilgard was an inquisitive child in the 1950s when he heard about a book kept under wraps at the Everett Public Library. The 1917 work by Wobbly muckraker Walker C. Smith told a story that Dilgard’s hometown had long tried to hide, if not forget altogether.
While elementary school classmates might still have been reading Hardy Boys mysteries, the precocious lad asked a reference librarian if he could see “The Everett Massacre: A History of the Class Struggle in the Lumber Industry.” She denied his request. A book so taboo, it seemed, didn’t belong in the hands of a child.
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