Big Jim Larkin/The Lusk Committee, Pt. II
This is our second entry focusing on the work of the Lusk Committee. The first was published here, on March 18.
One hundred years ago today … The Lusk Committee’s work was having a sinister effect. On this day, Irish labor activist James Larkin, known as “Big Jim,” in the press, was convicted of criminal anarchy by a NYC jury, based on evidence the Lusk Committee had provided the Manhattan District Attorney.
Here is the Daily News photo feature on Larkin upon his sentencing, May 3:
Daily News, 4 May, 1920, p.2.
Larkin had moved to the US in 1914, and, already a legendary international figure in workers’ movements, become active in the IWW and the US Socialist Party. Here is his mugshot from his arrest in NYC on November 7, 1919:
James Larkin, police photo, Nov. 8. 1919. Published in the Lusk Report: Revolutionary Radicalism: Its History, Purpose and Tactics. (Albany, NY: J.B. Lyon Co., 1920).
New York Herald, 28 April, 1920. p. 22. Newspapers.com.
Larkin was returned to “The Tombs,” at 125 White Street, the notorious prison erected in 1840 and operational to this day, to await sentencing.
“The Tombs,” ca. 1900. New York Public Library. Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy
He would be sentenced to five to ten years in Sing Sing Prison, upstate New York, but was pardoned after three by Governor Al Smith, who then had him deported to Ireland.
The bill containing the past Lusk Committee’s proposals had passed the State Assembly over the weekend of April 24-25, and now sat on the desk of Smith, serving his first term as governor, who was expected to veto it. (More on Smith and the bill will come later this year.)
The New York Tribune, 27 April, 1920. Newspapers.com