Fear Tactics: A History of Domestic Terrorism
A woodcut of the Haymarket Square bombing in 1886. From Harper’s Weekly.
On September 16, 1920, a bomb exploded on Wall Street as workers took their lunch break. The explosion killed 38 people and injured hundreds. The targets? What we’d call today “the one percent” – the powerful financiers who ran J.P. Morgan & Co. The Wall Street attack remained the deadliest terrorist bombing in the U.S. until Oklahoma City in 1995. But at the time, people saw it as just one more bombing in a long string of anarchist attacks that historian Beverly Gage calls America’s “First Age of Terror.”
In this hour of BackStory, the History Guys talk with Gage about the origins of domestic terrorism in the United States, and explore the question of what kinds of people and movements have been identified as “terrorists.” Along the way, they trace the relationship between terror and the state, consider lynching as a tactic of terrorism, and take a look at a little-known and unfinished Jack London novel, in which the author grapples with that ultimate question: is terrorism ever justified?
Guests include:
- Beverly Gage, Professor of History at Yale University
- Amy Wood, Associate Professor of History at Illinois State University
Further Exploration
Resources galore! Peruse a list of outside links compiled by the BackStory team to create a more complete picture of the history of domestic terrorism in American, and consult the bibliography of works used in the making of this episode.
Listen to individual show segments.
Even Further
Read the listener discussion that helped shape this episode.
See a listing of music used in the making of this episode.
Web Extra
Brian interviews Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 Commission.
Hi,
QuoteAs I listened to part of your show on terrorism in the United States I wondered if you knew the story of Andrew Kehoe and his bomb attack on Bath Consolidated Schools in 1927? Kehoe was an angry farmer and school board member who took out his anger over increased property taxes by blowing up part of the new school building built with those taxes on May 18th, 1927(the last day of school), killing 45 people including himself. I do believe this was the worst act of school violence in American history. I tried to explain to my high school students that at the time Kehoe was consdedered a madman but many people today think of him as a disgruntled domestic terrorist who attacked the symbol of his percieved oppression: the new public school that led to higher taxes. I think contemporary opinions of Kehoe having to be a madman rather than a cold hearted terrorist might have been that people in the 1920′s did not want to believe someone in their right mind could do such a heinous thing. Unfortunately, today we have experienced enough terrorism in this country to realize that a sane man could kill to make a point about a perceived wrong doing by local government. There are numerous web sites and a book entitled, “Bath Massacre: America’s First School Bombing” by Arnie Bernstein that might help to explain this horrible event that happened in a small town in Michigan during what some might say were more innocent times. What my students found chilling and telling about Kehoe was that one of his last acts before carrying out his detailed plot was to stencil out a sign that read, “Criminals are made, not born” which was found on a fence at his destroyed farm.
S. Swaton
According to Wikipedia: The Oklahoma City bombing was a terrorist bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. It would remain the most destructive act of terrorism on American soil until the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Oklahoma blast claimed 168 lives, including 19 children under the age of 6[1] and injured more than 680 people.[2
So the Wall Street explosion was not the bloodiest. See also previous comment.
Quote“The Assassination Bureau” was made into a 1969 movie with Oliver Reed, Diana Rigg, and Telly Savalas and unlike the book this story does end. I like the movie quite a bit but it is cheesy.
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