It was November 1919, and in Hartford the "Red Scare" was heating up. The local Post Office confiscated, and the FBI was investigating, hundreds of mysterious postcards addressed in red ink and bearing only a large question mark engulfed in flames. According to authorities, the cards were thought to be warnings to Hartford radicals. In surrounding towns, fire departments pledged themselves to "fight reds," and the local newspaper ran a story of the state prison warden who brandished a revolver and declared that he too was ready for the Red Menace. A Sunday sermon at the Asylum Hill Congregational Church denounced the anarchy of labor disturbances sweeping the country. Not to be outdone, the Hartford Courant ran an editorial cartoon, which showed Uncle Sam throwing an anarchist off a cliff, under the caption "Treat 'em Rough!"
For progressives, 1919 was a dangerous year: those who backed national health insurance were labeled "parlour-radicals." Two Hartford High Debating Club members were harassed and almost expelled for suggesting that industrialists, not radicals, were more harmful to the country and should be deported. Most ominously, plans were being made for a permanent detention camp for citizens whose "actions or utterances" were not in the best interest of U.S. security.
For Mark Kulish, November was particularly dangerous. Kulish, a worker at Colt Firearms factory, was one of about 100 Connecticut men rounded up on November 7th--"Bloody Friday"-- and imprisoned din the Seyms Street jail for almost two months without trial or benefit of legal counsel on suspicion of being a subversive. The round up was a prelude to the nationwide dragnet under the Alien Act spearheaded by U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Palmer's raids were designed to stem the increasing labor and political organizing inspired by the recent Russian revolution and fueled by the inequities that working people faced.
Kulish's "crimes" were typical of the flimsy and circumstantial charges leveled against the radicals: he was secretary of the local Russian Society, and he had in possession machine gun parts and their blueprints. Kulish and fifty two of the Hartford detainees, mostly Communists and labor organizers, were sent to Ellis Island in New York to join hundreds of others (including famous anarchist Emma Goldman) to await deportation to Russia.
The local raids fueled the hysteria of the times in sometimes absurd and tragic ways. As it turned out, the mysterious postcards were actually a promotional gimmick to publicize a Catholic anit-bolshevik movie entitled "The Burning Question." And Mark Kulish? A few days after his trip to Ellis Island, it was reported that the gun parts and blueprints in his possession were materials for a machine class he taught at Colt's.
Six months after the Hartford arrests, local officials and the national Bureau of Immigration were criticized by Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis F. Post. While careful not to ascribe any blame to individuals who handled the cases, Post's instructions to Hartford clearly pointed out the abuses suffered by those who were jailed. He charged that in many cases, bail had been set higher than listed on the warrants, prisoners were held incommunicado, aliens were not advised of their rights to legal representation and those with lawyers were refused access to them. Post also found that no interpreters were provided for non-English speaking prisoners. In addition, he charged that bail was not returned to those who had been able to afford it, and that local officials failed to provide their superiors with information on those arrested as to whether or not they were truly dangers to national security.
The Palmer Raids accomplished what they set out to do: they struck at friendships and families and curbed the struggles for decent working conditions and progressive social change.
