‘Children’s Crusade’ marches to free their dads: 1922

Led by the children of those imprisoned for speaking out against World War I and the draft, marchers , Members and supporters of the Children’s Crusade for Amnesty march in Washington, D.C. sometime between April 29 and August 3, 1922

 

Picket signs include "A little child shall lead them," "Childrens Crusade for Amnesty" "Debs is free, why not my daddy?," “Shall free speech be a crime?,” “Four years since I saw my daddy,” and “We are innocent victims.”

 

The U.S. passed the sedition, espionage and conscription acts during World War I that were in turn used to suppress dissent against the war. Any public opposition to the war could result in imprisonment and thousands received long prison sentences and/or were deported and/or had citizenship revoked for violating different provisions of the laws.

 

Among the most famous was Eugene Debs, the Socialist Party leader who campaigned for president from his jail cell and received nearly one million votes. Debs had been jailed for an antiwar speech in Canton, Ohio. He was released in December 1921 after a campaign to free him though his citizenship was not restored until 1976 when it was done posthumously.

 

Another well-known prisoner was Emma Goldman, a prominent anarchist who was jailed and deported to the Soviet Union for her views, despite being a naturalized citizen.

 

The “Children’s Crusade” was organized in St. Louis, Mo. during March and April 1922 by Kate Richards O’Hare who was herself imprisoned for fourteen months for war opposition and eventually involved relatives of the 132 political prisoners still jailed for federal crimes. An unknown number of others had been jailed on state charges.

 

The crusade traveled by train to rallies in Chicago, Cleveland, Rochester, New York City and Philadelphia before arriving in the District of Columbia April 29th.

 

Over the next two months they would meet with various members of Congress and the U.S. Attorney General to plead their case. On May 3rd, the delegation presented formal petitions on behalf of the imprisoned to the White House.

 

The group also attended church services at Calvary Baptist Church at the same time as President Harding.

 

On June 1st the group began picketing the White House as Harding refused to meet with them and continued daily until August 3rd when the group suspended their picketing and issued a statement:

 

“We have been picketing the White House for almost two months because the President refused to receive our plea in person, and there was no other method open to us to call it to his attention. On July 19th he received a delegation of citizens representing appeals signed by over a million persons, and to them he gave assurance that the cases in which reconsideration had been applied for would be decided in sixty days. We are confident that an examination of the records will convince him that not a single man should be held any longer.”

 

Harding would release some additional prisoners just prior to Christmas that year, but others still remained imprisoned.

 

Background and outcomes

 

The U.S. First Amendment protecting free speech was abandoned during World War I as several thousand people were arrested for speaking out against the war or conscription into the armed forces and these jailings in turn spurred an amnesty movement.

 

U.S. involvement in the war only lasted from April 2, 1917 until the armistice in November 1918.

 

An amnesty movement for all war resisters gained strength, particularly after the war was ended and after President Woodrow Wilson left office in January 1921.

 

Leading up to 1917 and the declaration of war against Germany, many labor unions, socialists, members of the so-called Old Right, and pacifist groups in the United States publicly denounced participation. However when the U.S. entered the war, most segments of American society rallied around the war.

 

However, left wing socialists, anarchists and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) denounced the war as an imperialist squabble between the wealthy of different nations over how to divide up the world. Quakers and other pacifists opposed the war on moral grounds

 

The military draft was introduced shortly after the U.S joined the war, which the anti-war movement bitterly opposed.

 

The Espionage Act of 1917 was passed to address spying but also contained a section which criminalized inciting or attempting to incite any mutiny, desertion, or refusal of duty in the armed forces, punishable with a fine of not more than $10,000, not more than twenty years in federal prison, or both.

 

Thousands of Wobblies (IWW members) and anti-war activists were prosecuted on authority of this and the Sedition Act of 1918, which tightened restrictions even more. Among the most famous was Eugene Debs, chairman of the Socialist Party of the USA for giving an anti-draft speech in Ohio. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld these prosecutions in a series of decisions.

 

An unknown additional number of people were prosecuted under state laws and jailed.

 

Conscientious objectors were punished as well, most of them Christian pacifist inductees into the armed services. They were placed directly in the armed forces and court-martialed, receiving log sentences and brutal treatment. A number of them died in Alcatraz Prison, then a military facility.

 

Vigilante groups were formed which suppressed dissent as well, such as by rounding up draft-age men and checking if they were in possession of draft cards or not.

 

Around 300,000 American men evaded or refused conscription in World War I. Immigrants, including naturalized citizens such as leading anarchist Emma Goldman, were deported, while native-born citizens, including Debs, lost their citizenship for their activities.

 

Perhaps 2,000 civilians convicted of sedition or under the Espionage law were held in military prisons at Fort Oglethorpe in Tennessee and Fort Douglas in Utah. They were mostly ordinary workers, including unemployed, and many whose only "crime" was to have been involved in radical politics or labor unrest. They were held along with German nationals suspected of disloyalty to the U.S. and German prisoners of war. Others convicted of political crimes were dispersed to the regular federal prison system.

 

After the war ended, other nations began to issue amnesty or commute the sentences of those convicted of political crimes during the war and pressure began to build in the U.S.

 

Delegations visited the White House in the ensuing years, including a 1920 group that included Basil M. Manly, former joint chair of the War Labor Board who said, “Washington pardoned the Tories and Lincoln pardoned the rebels. We believe President Wilson will not hesitate to grant general amnesty to the political prisoners of the world war.” Wilson, however, was unmoved.

 

The Sedition Act was repealed in 1921, but the Espionage Act remained, though U.S. Supreme Court decisions since then have substantially, but not explicitly, gutted the provisions used to squelch dissent.

 

Another delegation called on the White House April 18, 1921, along with meeting other top officials, marching by threes along the sidewalks and holding a mass meeting that evening at the Masonic Temple.

 

Among the delegation that met with President Warren Harding were Morris Hillquit of the Socialist Party; Rev. Norman Thomas, a later Socialist Party standard bearer; Jackson Ralston, attorney for the American Federation of Labor; and Albert DeSilver of the American Civil Liberties Union. A special appeal was made for Debs.

 

Debs, serving a 10-year sentence for sedition for his speech, had his sentenced commuted in December 1921 by President Warren Harding who had succeeded Wilson that year. Some 17 other prisoners also had their sentences commuted by Harding at that time.

 

The movement for amnesty began to gain steam as dozens of others remained imprisoned.

 

As 1922 began individuals and organizations around the country began to join the call for amnesty: the Georgia American Federation of Labor issued an appeal for amnesty, 50 member of Congress signed a petition for the same, socialist meetings demanding amnesty were held across the country while Quakers and other pacifists and socialists held public demonstrations.

 

In April 1922, the American Civil Liberties Union leader Roger Baldwin organized the Joint Amnesty Committee to coordinate activities across the country.

 

That same month, a million signatures on a massive petition gathered by the General Defense Committee of Chicago were delivered to the White House by Hillquit, who had also been an Socialist Party antiwar candidate for mayor of New York during the war in 1917 and drew 100,000 votes; the wife of Robert LaFollette, senator from Wisconsin; and James H. Maurer, president of the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor.

 

A Children’s Crusade comprised of the wives and children of some of those imprisoned and their supporters staged a well-publicized train trip across the country ending in Washington, D.C. where they picketed the White House and held meetings with government officials for a four-month period from April through August of 1922.

 

In August, Harding issued a statement refusing general amnesty, but committing to an expedited case-by-case review of anti-war prisoners.

 

The White House statement said in part, “he would never, as long as he was President, pardon any criminal who preached the destruction of the government by force.”

 

The idea that people were permitted free speech unless they committed or advocated “overt acts” would not be accepted as law until the late-1950s through the mid-1960s U.S. Supreme Court decisions on the imprisonment of Communist Party members during the second red scare.

 

The Children’s Crusade suspended their demonstrations after Harding’s statement feeling they had won as much as they would win at that time. However, other protest continued.

 

In December 1922, Harding issued another series of pardons and commutations, but many contained conditions of deportation and loss of citizenship.

 

In December 1923, President Calvin Coolidge commuted the sentences of all prisoners who had been convicted for opposing the government and Selective Service during World War I. By this point that commutation affected only 31 prisoners.

 

In March 1924, Coolidge restored the citizenship to those who had been convicted of desertion between the time of the Armistice of November 1918 and the war’s official end by the U.S. in 1921.

 

Coolidge’s successor Herbert Hoover refused to pardon or commute the sentences of any remaining prisoners or restore former prisoners citizenship in a 1929 letter to social activist Jane Adams, saying that any such decision would result in “acrimonious discussion” within the country.

 

It wouldn’t be until 1933 when President Franklin Roosevelt, 15 years after the end of fighting, issued a proclamation restoring civil rights to about 1,500 war resisters. The proclamation applied only to those convicted of violating the draft and espionage acts. There was no reduction in prison sentences, however, because all had already been released by that time and no restoration of rights for those convicted under the Sedition Act.

 

After a nationwide campaign involving petitions and resolutions, Debs’ citizenship was restored posthumously in 1976.

 

For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHBqjzCcJd

 

This image is a National Photo Company photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress, Call Number: LC-F8- 18641 [P&P]

 

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