Harry Krivitsky, 50-year-old, Russian-born, wobbly meat packer of Sioux City, Iowa is buried by his comrades.

‘With Heads Uncovered: Russian I.W.W. Buried’ by Mildred E. Chase from Truth (Duluth). Vol. 3 No. 34. August 20, 1920.

Funeral Procession Marches Through Iowa City.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa. A unique funeral procession wended its way solemnly through the business district of Sioux City at five o’clock the other day. It was the last march of Gabrielle C. Kritwitsky, a Russian I.W.W.

A band playing a plaintive haunting Russian air came first, followed by a standard bearer whose banner announced the name, dates of birth and death of the deceased and that he was a member of branch 1,500 of the I.W.W. Then came a “wobbly” with a huge pillow of pink and white roses followed by another with an enormous brilliant red wreath from which streamed a broad red ribbon.

Two hundred and fifty I.W.W.’s in working clothes walked after them, the hearse and six automobiles containing women and children bringing up the rear. At the Floyd cemetery singing only marked the burial rites. Most of the attendants at the funeral were fellow-workers of the deceased at the stockyards but all were “wobs”.

This unusual procession was made possible by the fact that the mayor of Sioux City, Wallace M. Short, believes in upholding the constitution that therefore the Industrial Workers of the World are allowed their full constitutional rights of free speech and peaceable assembly.

Truth emerged from the The Duluth Labor Leader, a weekly English language publication of the Scandinavian local of the Socialist Party in Duluth, Minnesota and began on May Day, 1917 as a Left Wing alternative to the Duluth Labor World. The paper was aligned to both the SP and the IWW leading to the paper being closed down in the first big anti-IWW raids in September, 1917. The paper was reborn as Truth, with the Duluth Scandinavian Socialists joining the Communist Labor Party of America in 1919. Shortly after the editor, Jack Carney, was arrested and convicted of espionage in 1920. Truth continued to publish with a new editor JO Bentall until 1923 as an unofficial paper of the CP.

Access to full issue: https://www.mnhs.org/newspapers/lccn/sn89081142/1920-08-20/ed-1/seq-1