Institutional Racism

Palmer Raids
According to the United States Department of Justice, Palmer violated his oath of office
by misusing the Dept of Justice to illegally go after those advocating for better wages.
Strikers became targets of agent provocateurs who infiltrated meetings of "communist
labor" and anti-war activists. After the Bisbee deportations became exposed in the
press, Americans were divided about the treatment of illegal aliens, who were purported
communists. Former President Theodore Roosevelt opined in the press that the Bisbee
miners "had it coming, as they were hell-bent on havoc!" The Dept of Justice went from
advocating for persons deprived of rights and liberty by state actors to detaining them
under dubious warrants and suspicion of radicalism. The Red Scare that fueled
institutional racism in the 1920s against Russian Jews and other Eastern European
immigrants was a backlash to the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia and a bombing
campaign early in 1919 by Italian anarchists advocating the overthrow of the
government. The result was the infamous Palmer raids, ostensibly a deportation
measure to remove dangerous aliens. In 1919 Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer
began a series of raids cooked up to remove radicals and anarchists from the US.
Warrants were requested from compliant officials in the Labor Dept, and a number of
foreign nationals caught up in the sweeping raids were eventually deported. As only the
department of labor had the legal right to deport aliens, they did object to the methods;
nevertheless, under color of law, the raids began on November 7, 1919. It was led by a
24-year-old J. Edgar Hoover heading a new division of the Justice Department's Bureau
of Investigation, called the General Intelligence Division. Armed with responsibility for
investigating the programs of radical groups and identifying their members, the raids
began with agents of the Bureau of Investigation, together with local police, executing a
series of well-publicized and violent raids against the Union of Russian Workers in 12
cities.
Newspaper accounts reported some were "badly beaten" during the arrests. Many later
swore they were threatened and beaten during questioning. Government agents cast a
wide net, bringing in some American citizens, passers-by who admitted being Russian,
some not members of the Russian Workers. Others were teachers conducting night
school classes in space shared with the targeted radical groups. Arrests far exceeded
the number of warrants. Of 650 arrested in New York City, the government managed to
deport just 43. Hoover organized the next raids. He successfully persuaded the
Department of Labor to ease its insistence on promptly alerting those arrested of their
right to an attorney. Instead, Labor issued instructions that its representatives could wait
until after the case against the defendant was established, "in order to protect
government interests." Less openly, Hoover decided to interpret Labor's agreement to
act against the Communist Party to include a different organization, the Communist
Labor Party. Finally, despite the fact that Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson insisted
that more than membership in an organization was required for a warrant, Hoover
worked with more compliant Labor officials and overwhelmed Labor staff to get the
warrants he wanted. Justice Department officials, including Palmer and Hoover, later
claimed ignorance of such details.
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