Around noon on March 31, 1912, a crier waved a red banner down Fifth Street. The public is invited to Seventh and B Streets at 2:30, the banner announced, to attend the funeral of Michael Hoey, who died in the cause of Free Speech.

A large man chased the crier down, hooked him around the neck, and slammed him to the pavement. Then the man loaded his mouth with saliva and spit on the emblem of anarchy.

At 2:30, the doors opened at Johnson, Connell, & Saums Mortuary. Harry Daggett emerged first. He wore a frayed, three-piece suit and hoisted a red flag. Behind him came 20 IWW Wobblies. As six men carried Hoeys casket two blocks from the mortuary to the vacant lot at Seventh and B, angry onlookers assembled on the sidewalks.

Thats how contemptible they are, said a sailor from the USS Maryland, using the sanctity of death to protect them.

Too cowardly otherwise, added another.

When the cortege reached the vacant lot, free-speech supporters awaited them. Daggett stepped to the side.

Get the fellow with the red flag, someone shouted. Thats too much!

Detective Harvey Shepherd raised a hand: Dont interrupt the service, he said. Ill get him.

At the station, Daggett told police he didnt know what the flag meant. Hed become the color bearer because Mike Hoey was his friend and a good man. Asked if he was a Wobbly, Daggett said no, but he believed in most of their principles and would let better minds than his plan solutions. When Daggett left the station, wrote the Union, he had to run a gauntlet of hisses, hoots, and jeers from the crowd outside.

Gray-haired Michael Hoey was an IWW veteran of free-speech fights in Spokane and Fresno. Arrested during the first week of protests in San Diego, Hoey spent 40 days in city jail. Although they denied it, Hoey swore that three officers rookie patrolman Irwin, in particular clubbed and kicked him repeatedly in the groin. Cramped with over 100 prisoners in a cell built for 60, Hoey had to sleep on a cement floor and eat inedible food. When I asked Dr. Claude Magee [the police surgeon] for a laxative, he gave me an emetic, which caused such violent vomiting that I became seriously ill.

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City Leaders Cracked Heads at the County Line