This post is not about the Wall Street protesters, well, yes it is, but not about the Occupy Wall Street protest of 2011. A century ago, people were not any happier about what went on in New York City’s financial district.
On September 16, 1920, an explosion at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in downtown Manhattan killed 39 people and wounded hundreds more. It would be the deadliest terror attack on American soil until the Oklahoma City bombing 75 years later. Despite its proximity to the attacks on New York on September 11, 2001, the Wall Street bombing of 1920 has more in common with the public sentiment at the Occupy Wall Street protests in lower Manhattan today—with one notable exception. Today’s protesters are committed to nonviolence. The anarchists of yesteryear were not. They largely failed in their attacks on capitalism and Wall Street—and their tactics turned public sentiment against their cause.
That bombing was the culmination of decades of violence on Wall Street, which involved suicide bombs, union-busting mercenaries, and gunfire. After the 1920 bombing, cooler heads prevailed, and everything was hunky-dory on Wall Street …for about nine years.
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