Thomas Mooney (1882 - 1942)

Fri Dec 08, 1882

Image

Thomas Mooney, born on this day in 1882, was a socialist political activist and IWW labor leader who was falsely convicted of the San Francisco Preparedness Day Bombing of 1916, serving 22 years in prison before being pardoned in 1939.

Mooney was well-known as a socialist and labor radical - he assisted Eugene V. Debs’s 1910 presidential campaign, published socialist literature, and was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). After the Preparedness Day Bombing, Mooney, his wife Rena, and two associates were arrested and subjected to a show trial.

Convicted on scant evidence, Mooney served 22 years in prison before finally being pardoned in 1939 by California Governor Culbert Olson.

Mooney then began campaigning for his associate Warren Billings’s release, traveling around the country making speeches. During this tour, he drew a full house at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Billings was released in 1939 and pardoned in 1961.