The Wall Street bombing occurred at 12:01 p.m. on September 16, 1920, in the Financial District of New York City. Thirty-eight people were killed and 400 injured by the blast. It was more deadly than the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times building by the McNamara brothers and would remain the deadliest bomb attack on U.S. soil for nearly seven years, until the Bath School bombings in Bath Township, Michigan.

Attack

At noon, a horse-drawn wagon passed by lunchtime crowds on Wall Street in New York City. The wagon then stopped across the street from the headquarters of the J.P. Morgan Inc. bank at 23 Wall Street, on the Financial District's busiest corner.Inside, of dynamite with of heavy, cast-iron sash weights exploded in a timer-set detonation, sending the slugs tearing through the air. The horse and wagon were blasted into small fragments. More than thirty people were killed in a relatively short interval of time.

The bomb killed mostly messengers, stenographers, clerks and brokers, caused over $2 million in property damage and wrecked most of the interior spaces of the Morgan building.

Reaction

It was not immediately obvious that the explosion was, in the opinion of the FBI, an act of terrorism; by 3:30 pm, the board of governors of the New York Stock Exchange had met and decided to open for business the next day. Crews cleaned up the area overnight, making the next-day opening possible but also removing physical evidence that might have been used in determining the culprit.

The Wall Street attack was unusual in that the bomb was detonated in a public place, evidently targeting financial workers and institutions. Officials blamed anarchist and communist elements, fueling the ongoing Palmer Raids. The Washington Post went so far as to call the bombing an "act of war."

The bombing caused renewed investigation into the activities and movements of foreign radicals, stimulating the development of the U.S. Justice Department's General Intelligence Division of the Bureau of Investigation (forerunner of the FBI).

Perpetrators

The case was investigated for over three years; in the end, the Bureau of Investigation was not able to identify the perpetrators. Decades later the FBI said "the best evidence and analysis since that fateful day of September 16, 1920, suggests that the Bureau's initial thought was correct—that a small group of Italian Anarchists were to blame. But the mystery remains."

Anarchists were suspected, especially the Galleanists, Italian anarchist followers of Luigi Galleani. The Galleanists had a motive for planning the bombing, because they were incensed over the indictment for murder of two of their colleagues, Sacco and Vanzetti. Discrimination against immigrants and resident aliens, especially those from Eastern Europe and Sicily, increased notably after the attack, bolstering flagging public support for the Palmer raids. Investigators searched hundreds of stables to determine who had purchased the horse and wagon, but nothing was uncovered. The note was analyzed and its language structure found similar to other 'bomb' leaflets left at the scene by the Galleanists, but this by itself was insufficient. Despite vows that the police would catch the perpetrators, no charges were ever filed. The FBI rendered the file inactive in 1940, and the crime remains officially unsolved.

One Galleanist in particular, Mario Buda (1884 - 1963), an associate of Sacco and Vanzetti whose car led to the arrest of the latter for a separate robbery and murder, is alleged by some historians, including Paul Avrich, to have planted the bomb as revenge for the arrest and indictment of his fellow Galleanists. Buda's involvement was confirmed by statements made by his nephew Frank Maffi and Charles Poggi, who interviewed Buda himself in Savignano, Italy, in 1955. Buda (at that time known by the alias of Mike Boda) had just managed to elude authorities at the time of the arrests of Sacco and Vanzetti, was experienced in the use of dynamite and other explosives, and is believed to have constructed several of the largest package bombs for the Galleanists, including a large black powder bomb that killed ten persons {including nine policemen} in Milwaukee, Wisconsin November 24, 1917. Moreover, Buda was in New York City at the time of the bombing. However, he was never arrested or questioned by police. Interestingly in the San Francisco Preparedness Day Bombing of July 22, 1916, a sash weight bomb had been used which killed 10 and wounded 40.

After leaving New York, Buda resumed the use of his real name in order to secure a passport from the Italian vice-consul, then promptly sailed for Naples. By November he was back in his native Italy, never to return to the United States. However, Galleanist bomb attacks would continue for twelve more years, culminating with the attempted assassination of Sacco and Vanzetti's trial judge Webster Thayer in 1932.

See also

• First Red Scare
• Luigi Galleani
• Domestic terrorism in the United States
• Milwaukee Police Department

Notes

1. Baily, Thomas A.; & Kennedy, David M. (1994). The American Pageant (10th ed.). D.C. Heath and Company. ISBN 0-669-33892-3.
2. Watson, Bruce, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind, Viking Press (2007), ISBN 0670063533, 9780670063536, p. 77
3. Watson, Bruce, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind, Viking Press (2007), ISBN 0670063533, 9780670063536, p. 77: A clock was used as a timing device; an improvement on previous Galleanist bombs detonated by home-made acid fuses of questionable reliability.
4. Terror on Wall Street from the website of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
5. Previous Terror on Wall Street - A Look at a 1920 Bombing, an article from TheStreet.com posted nine days after the September 11 attacks
6. History News Service from h-net.org
7. Avrich, Paul, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background, Princeton University Press, 1991
8. Avrich, Paul, Anarchist Voices, An Oral History of Anarchism in America, Princeton: Princeton University Press (1996), Interview of Charles Poggi, pp. 132-133: Among other interesting admissions, Buda acknowledged that Niccola Sacco was in fact present ("Sacco c'era") at the South Braintree payroll robbery and murder for which he was eventually executed.
9. Avrich, Paul, Anarchist Voices, An Oral History of Anarchism in America, Princeton: Princeton University Press (1996), Interview of Charles Poggi, pp. 132-133
10. Milwaukee Police Department Officer Memorial Page from the City of Milwaukee website
11. Watson, Bruce, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind, Viking Press (2007), ISBN 0670063533, 9780670063536, p. 15
12. Balousek, Marv, and Kirsh, J. Allen, 50 Wisconsin Crimes of the Century, Badger Books Inc. (1997) ISBN 1878569473, 9781878569479, p. 113: The 1917 bomb used black powder with a homemade sulfuric acid/metal plate "time" fuse, which failed to explode until the package was opened at the police station. By 1920, it is notable that Galleanist bombmaker(s) had apparently discontinued the use of the unreliable acid detonators in favor of dynamite with an electric blasting cap and a clock wired to a battery as a timed detonator.
13. Avrich, Paul, Anarchist Voices, An Oral History of Anarchism in America, Princeton: Princeton University Press (1996)
14. Dell’Arti, Giorgio, La Storia di Mario Buda, Io Donna, 26 gennaio 2002, http://www.memoteca.it/upload/dl/E-Book/Mario_Buda.pdf
15. Avrich, Paul, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background, Princeton University Press (1991), ISBN 0691026041, 9780691026046, p. 213

References

• Davis, Mike. Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb, Verso Books (2007)
• Watson, Bruce, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind, Viking Press (2007), ISBN 0670063533, 9780670063536

Further reading