McKinley Monument, Philadelphia

South Penn Square at South Broad Street, Philadelphia
Close to the Occupy Philly encampment.

On September 6, 1901 Leon Czolgosz, an emotionally disturbed, working class, self-described anarchist acting alone, shot President William McKinley, who died a week later.

Life for anarchists in the US got pretty dicey then. Some in other cities were arrested, beaten, harassed, run out of town, or had their businesses wrecked. But in Philadelphia only perceived anarchists were maltreated, while the actual, committed anarchists were merely made very nervous. In a funny example, a lady named Kate Wilson was drunk on a trolley car and yelled "I am Emma Goldman --Beware!" She was arrested and fined a few dollars. But an Italian man named Cupio was siezed and threatened with lynching for saying to a neighbor that the president was "no good."

Some here left the movement and all of the many public anarchist activities were stopped. But within a month of McKinley's death the Philly anarchists were adressing audiences again, and by Spring over 80 boy students at Central High School entered an essay contest on "The Origin & Creed of Anarchy." Two of the winning papers survive: one by Albert Strickler (later a leading dermatologist who lived a few blocks from where I live now) and the other by 15-year old Alain Leroy Locke (later a world-famous intellectual).

Behind the figure of McKinley here is a bundle of bound rods called a "fasces" which was the Ancient Roman symbol of a ruler's power of life and death over his subjects. It has been used by many governments (including the Italian Fascisti) ever since as a symbol of power.

George Brown, one of the leading anarchists of the city, told a reporter just after the shooting that, "I have always been oppsed to violence. It is this feeling of opposition that is my reason for being against government. [...] I am shocked at any act of violence, whether to President McKinley or to a Filipino." This was shortly after the Spanish-American War and the birth of the Anti-Imperialist League.

Another anarchist, Anton Köberlein, was asked, "Do the anarchists countenance the attempt to kill President McKinley?"

"I don't know," he replied. "Ask me something easy."