The Day San Diego Tried to Ban Street Speech

The Day San Diego Tried to Ban Street Speech | San Diego Uncovered

SAN DIEGO UNCOVERED

The Day San Diego Tried to Ban Street Speech

Downtown San Diego once had a place nicknamed “Soapbox Row.”

Religious groups, Socialists, reformers, labor organizers and other speakers gathered near Fifth and E Streets to address anyone willing to stop and listen.

Then, in January 1912, San Diego's City Council decided it had heard enough.

The city passed an ordinance prohibiting public speaking in a section of downtown.

What followed wasn't a minor First Amendment dispute.

It became one of the most infamous free-speech fights in American labor history—complete with mass arrests, overflowing jails, fire hoses, vigilantes, national headlines and thousands of people converging on San Diego.

San Diego Was Reinventing Itself

San Diego in 1912 was a relatively small but ambitious city preparing for a much bigger future.

The Panama-California Exposition was already being planned for 1915. Civic boosters hoped the event would introduce San Diego to the country as an important Pacific port, tourist destination and modern city.

At the same time, the downtown business district had become a gathering place for street speakers.

Among them were members of the Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW—the radical labor organization whose members became known as the Wobblies.

Who Were the Wobblies?

Founded in Chicago in 1905, the IWW attempted to organize workers often overlooked by established unions, including migrant and unskilled laborers.

Its rhetoric could be openly revolutionary, and its members frequently used street-corner speeches to recruit workers and spread their message.

That made public speaking especially important to the organization.

It also made the IWW deeply threatening to many business owners and civic leaders.

San Diego History Center research notes that the organization did not discriminate on the basis of race or sex when seeking members—unusual among many labor organizations of the period—but its direct-action philosophy and confrontational rhetoric generated intense opposition.

The Fight Centered on Fifth and E

The intersection around Fifth and E Streets was one of downtown's busiest areas.

Street speakers from multiple causes had used the area for years.

But by late 1911, complaints were growing that crowds were obstructing pedestrians and hurting nearby businesses.

Tensions increased further after a disorderly confrontation in early January 1912.

City officials responded.

San Diego Creates a No-Speech Zone

On January 8, 1912, the San Diego City Council approved an ordinance prohibiting public speeches in a roughly six-block-square downtown area centered around Fifth and E.

The law was modeled after a similar Los Angeles ordinance.

It did not prohibit every public speech everywhere in San Diego.

That's an important distinction.

But it prohibited the activity precisely where street speakers most wanted to speak: in the crowded commercial center where they could reach the largest audience.

The Free Speech League Pushes Back

Opposition formed almost immediately.

A local chapter of the California Free Speech League brought together people with different political views who opposed the restriction.

The IWW saw the ordinance as a direct challenge.

Its strategy was simple and remarkably confrontational:

Keep speaking. Keep getting arrested. Fill the jails.

February 8: The Arrests Begin

Enforcement was delayed while city officials worked through questions about when the ordinance legally took effect.

Then came the showdown.

On the night of February 8, 1912, speakers deliberately challenged the restriction.

Police arrested dozens of men and several women.

As one speaker was removed, another could take the box and begin speaking.

The cycle repeated.

The Plan Was to Overwhelm the System

By February 21, historical accounts indicate that roughly 175 people had been jailed.

The Free Speech League and IWW pushed a strategy designed to strain San Diego's legal system: arrested protesters would demand individual jury trials.

Jails filled.

Courts became clogged.

IWW publications called supporters from around the country to come to San Diego and join the fight.

The organization's general secretary warned the mayor that the campaign could continue for years if necessary.

San Diego's Response Became Much Darker

What began as a dispute over street speaking deteriorated into something far more violent.

Local authorities attempted to stop additional IWW supporters from entering the area.

Citizen vigilante groups became involved.

Historical accounts describe beatings, forced removals and other abuses against suspected Wobblies.

The conflict increasingly became less about orderly enforcement of an ordinance and more about fear, retaliation and mob behavior on multiple sides.

Police Turned Fire Hoses on the Crowd

One of the most dramatic confrontations came on March 10.

IWW supporters gathered around the city jail and joined imprisoned protesters in singing labor songs.

A large crowd of spectators also assembled.

Police Chief Keno Wilson ordered fire hoses turned on the gathering.

Historical photographs preserved by the San Diego History Center show police using water to break up IWW congregations during the 1912 fight.

Then the Story Drew National Figures

The San Diego conflict attracted attention well beyond Southern California.

Among those drawn into the controversy were nationally known radicals and free-speech advocates.

The episode became part of a much larger national debate about organized labor, radical politics, public order and civil liberties.

For a city preparing to introduce itself to the world at the upcoming exposition, the publicity was hardly what civic boosters had envisioned.

This Wasn't a Simple Heroes-and-Villains Story

It is tempting to turn the 1912 conflict into a neat story in which one side represented freedom and the other represented repression.

The historical record is considerably messier.

Some IWW rhetoric was deliberately inflammatory, and violence occurred during the broader confrontation.

But San Diego's response also included vigilante violence and extralegal repression that went far beyond ordinary enforcement of a municipal ordinance.

The San Diego History Center's detailed study ultimately describes the outcome not simply as “law and order” defeating lawlessness, but as a conflict in which illegal force played a major role.

The Fight Changed Downtown

The consequences may even have influenced San Diego's geography.

Historical research notes that Fifth and E gradually lost its position as the center of downtown street activity after the conflict.

San Diego's business district increasingly expanded east and west along Broadway instead.

A fight over who could speak on a street corner may have helped change which streets became important.

The Bigger Lesson

The San Diego free-speech fight became one of the best-known IWW confrontations in the country.

Its importance extends beyond labor history.

It illustrates how quickly fear of an unpopular group can turn a debate over public order into a much larger challenge to civil liberties.

The historical study published by the San Diego History Center closes with a lesson that remains strikingly relevant: restricting the speaking rights of a disliked group can ultimately threaten the rights of everyone.

Stand at Fifth and E Today

Today, the intersection sits amid downtown San Diego's hotels, restaurants, offices and redevelopment.

There is little about the modern streetscape to suggest that this was once ground zero for a confrontation that drew national attention.

But in 1912, standing on a box and speaking at this corner could get you arrested.

And people traveled across the country specifically for the opportunity to do it.

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Sources & Further Reading

• Journal of San Diego History — The I.W.W. Free Speech Movement: San Diego, 1912
• San Diego History Center — Images from the 1912 Free Speech Movement
• San Diego History Center — Gold in the Sun, 1900–1919