Seattle has long been known for political upheaval and protest: the Capitol Hill occupation in 2020; the World Trade Organization protests of 1999; anti-Vietnam demonstrations in the 1960s; the Longshoremen’s strike of 1934; the bashing of May Day marchers in 1930; the Seattle General Strike of 1919; the anti-Chinese riot of 1886.
Such was the case during what was supposed to be a glorious Seattle summer festival when sailors, soldiers, socialists and innocent bystanders became embroiled in a violent conflict that trashed parts of Downtown. Each side in this collision claimed their free speech was violated — and they were right.
So what the heck happened?
Today we have Seafair, Seattle’s annual summer celebration. Its ancestor in the early 20th century was the multiday festivity known as the Golden Potlatch, launched in 1911. Then as now, the U.S. Navy came to town, motorboats raced on Lake Washington, there were air shows, pageants, flag-waving and parades. It was billed as Seattle’s Mardi Gras. Floats of every description rolled through Downtown touting local history, prosperity, diversity and progress. It was a celebration of how far Seattle had come in the mere 60 years since its founding.
The Potlatch also featured Seattle boosters’ appropriation of First Nations cultures. They formed a fraternal organization called the Tillicum Elttaes — Tilikum meaning family or tribe in Chinook jargon, and Elttaes being Seattle spelled backwards. They wore “red face” and dressed in garb associated with North Coast Native peoples. They performed elaborate initiation rituals, and some even marched in Ku Klux Klan-like robes.
The word “potlatch” described a ritual of wealth-sharing in some Indigenous communities, a practice that was banned in Canada in an effort to suppress Native cultures. In Seattle, it meant a civic celebration of spectacle, crowds and saloon-hopping.
In 1913, the Golden Potlatch crowd gathered in Pioneer Square, a centerpiece of the festivities. Seattle, already known for its lefty activists, allowed soapbox speakers to address the public on streetcorners. At Occidental Avenue and Washington Street, a speaker, Mrs. Annie Miller, was promoting women’s suffrage when a drunk sailor was said to have insulted her. Along with eight or nine other sailors and soldiers, they knocked over her table, scattered her literature and punched her, or so it was claimed in a sworn affidavit. A well-dressed man is said to have attempted to defend her honor, and a street brawl ensued.
A different version of events was trumpeted by The Seattle Times the next day. They claimed Miller was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World — the radical IWW, known as the Wobblies — who were widely considered anti-American. The Times said that after she insulted men in uniform and the American flag, a mob of Wobblies and socialist sympathizers — including two burly loggers — jumped the servicemen. “A gang of red-flag worshippers and anarchists were brutally beating two bluejackets and three soldiers who had dared protest against insults heaped on the American flag … ”
The Times also reported that a National Guard officer and a group of Spanish-American War veterans had threatened the Wobblies with violence if they started anything further. The Times laid the blame for the brawl at the feet of the mayor, George Cotterill, for allowing such unpatriotic speech to be uttered in Seattle.
The next night, thousands gathered in the streets, bolstered by hundreds of sailors and soldiers as well as booze-fueled Potlatch revelers. A riot of revenge resulted, led by the servicemen, who rampaged through the streets of Downtown. It was an orgy of destruction leveled at anything connected with the IWW and socialists. Offices were trashed and emptied of their contents, some of which were set alight in the streets. Even a gospel mission was attacked in the whirlwind of rage. The police, observers noted, let the patriot riot continue with little intervention.
The next day, The Seattle Star blared “City Under Riot Law” and ran photos of the extensive property damage on the front page. They explained that the city charter gave the mayor the right to take control of the city’s police force to restore law and order. Mayor Cotterill shut down the saloons and halted liquor sales, banned street speakers and accused The Seattle Times of a “plain and willful inciting of the riot.” He ordered the newspaper shut down. He sent police officers to surround the Times building, and demanded the Times submit copy to him for approval before it could be published. He promised to “blue-pencil” only articles inciting more violence.
The Times — led by its frothing publisher, Col. Alden Blethen — immediately appealed to a judge, who overturned Cotterill’s edict as unconstitutional and scolded him for abridging free speech. Freed from the mayor’s ban by the court, the Times followed with a headline blaring “Mayor Cotterill Attempts the Role of Czar!” Vitriol flowed freely from the paper’s typewriters, describing the mayor as “this despised man — advocate of anarchy and the leader of the red-flag gang.”
The riot was largely bloodless, and no one went to jail because of it. But there was fallout. Blethen ran a recall of Cotterill, but the mayor survived it and soon moved on. The Blethen family still owns and runs The Seattle Times, a remarkable multigenerational legacy for a local paper.
As for the Golden Potlatch, it was tarnished by the riot and fizzled out a year later. The epic confrontation of 1913 was over who got to exercise free speech: soapbox speechifiers who criticized the government or wealthy right-wing media owners. The answer, of course, is both. But it wasn’t the last word.
