1. The citizens' court of Harrison demanded the resignations of the mayor and board of aldermen. Although the mayor initially refused to comply, he eventually did so, as did three aldermen and the local sheriff, who had deputized fifty marshals to protect local citizens.

2. On Aug. 24, 1922, Klansman from the northern Louisiana town of Bastrop kidnapped five men from the neighboring--and rival--town of Mer Rouge, torturing and then murdering two of them and flogging two others. The murdered men, F. Watt Daniel and Thomas Richards, were outspoken opponents of the Ku Klux Klan. The incident touched off further violence between Mer Rouge and Bastrop, leading Louisiana governor John Parker to declare martial law in the area and bring in the Louisiana National Guard. Two grand juries heard evidence in the case but refused to issue indictments, and no one was ever brought to trial for the murders.

3. Although coal miners had been on strike since Apr. 1, 1922, United Mine Workers of America District 12 (Illinois) allowed the Southern Illinois Coal Co. to get a surface mine near Herrin, Ill., ready to resume production once the strike was over.

However, after the company broke its agreement in June, troubled erupted: The company fired union miners, employed armed guards to protect the new work force -- members of an independent steam shovel workers union in Chicago -- and began shipping coal. Col. Samuel Nase Hunter of the state militia tried to get the company to honor its agreement, but to no avail. And after United Mine Workers' president John L. Lewis called the steam shovel operators "common strikebreakers" and their union "an outlaw organization" tensions rose.

On June 21, after a company guard allegedly shot and killed Jordie Henderson, a union miner, a crowd of strikers and sympathizers numbering over than a thousand attacked the mine and, after an all-night gun battle, forced forty-seven strikebreakers and mine guards to surrender. As the captives marched back to Herrin they were attacked by the strikers and their sympathizers; twenty prisoners were killed, including mine superintendent Claude Kline McDowell. A grand jury issued over two hundred indictments on charges of murder, conspiracy, assault, and rioting, but only eleven men were ever brought to trial and they were acquitted. The other indictments were eventually dropped

4. The Washington Post did not publish SG's letter, but it did print extracts from his press statement. See "Gompers Seeks State Curb of Harrison Mob," Washington Post, Jan. 24, 1923.

5. On Jan. 24, 1923, SG sent similar letters to the Baltimore Sun, the New York Times, the New York Tribune, the New York World, the Philadelphia Public Ledger, and the Washington Herald. When S. M. Reynolds, managing editor of the Baltimore Sun, replied he had been unable to publish fuller reports because nothing more had been furnished by the news services, SG wrote the Associated Press, United Press, and the International News Service on Jan. 31 and Feb. 2 to ask to review their coverage. The Associated Press agreed to allow William English Walling to review their press files and sent a reporter to Arkansas, and United Press sent SG a complete set of their clippings on the incident.