Biography
Charles Krieger was an IWW organizer from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Charles Krieger was held in jail awaiting trail under the Espionage Act from December 28, 1917, until at least May 1919. He was an organizer for the IWW in the Oklahoma oil fields.
A contemporary report in the December 1919 One Big Union Monthly describes twenty-two months of pretrial detention, first in the federal jail at Muskogee and then in the Tulsa County Jail. It connects the prosecution to the October 29, 1917 explosion at Carter Oil executive J. Edgar Pew’s Tulsa residence and argues that Krieger was targeted to suppress oil-field union organizing. The report names Wenzel Francik and J. E. Wiggins as fellow IWW prisoners in Muskogee.
The March 1920 One Big Union Monthly prisoner roster, under the printed name KRIEGER , CHARLES, reports: Federal . Indicted at Muskogee , Okla. Released . Re-arrested under state charge Oct. 16 , 1918 . County jail , Tulsa, Okla. This is the contemporary labor organization’s account. Indictment, bail and imposed sentence are distinguished from physical admission, actual release and complete time served; no missing custody endpoint is inferred. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/one-big-union-monthly/v02n03-mar-1920_One%20Big%20Union.pdf#page=13
1920s arrest-date review: The Liberator's contemporary account places Charles Krieger's initial warrantless arrest in December 1917. The arrest is recorded to the month only. It also describes a later rearrest after the original indictment was quashed; the existing incarceration date and coarse release year require further corroboration and are not independently established by this article. No new portrait was identified.
Source: The Liberator, September 1919, printed page 3, One Man Against Standard Oil, original page visually checked.
A contemporary report in the December 1919 One Big Union Monthly describes twenty-two months of pretrial detention, first in the federal jail at Muskogee and then in the Tulsa County Jail. It connects the prosecution to the October 29, 1917 explosion at Carter Oil executive J. Edgar Pew’s Tulsa residence and argues that Krieger was targeted to suppress oil-field union organizing. The report names Wenzel Francik and J. E. Wiggins as fellow IWW prisoners in Muskogee.
Eugene Lyons's contemporaneous report from Tulsa, dated October 26, 1919, describes Krieger's dynamiting trial, defense attorney Fred Moore's cross-examination of prosecution witness Hubert Vowles, and trial judge Redmond S. Cole. The newspaper alleges an oil-industry frame-up and identifies witness aliases; these allegations are attributed to the report, rather than treated as adjudicated findings. This trial observation supplies no exact verdict or physical release date and is not counted as an additional custody interval.
White reports that Krieger’s first Tulsa trial ended in a hung jury on November 10, 1919 and that a second jury acquitted him on June 8, 1920 after over two years jailed awaiting trial. The charge concerned the alleged bombing conspiracy at oil executive J. Edgar Pew’s home; it was not simply a prosecution for wartime speech.
Ahmed White, Under the Iron Heel (University of California Press, 2022), physical PDF pages [171, 172] (printed page = physical minus 11); source193 SHA256 7c24fb0ba336fcbf379fb9720f70dcdbf754d796a50dee77b39e38e0f9bd2868.
The executive-board report describes the earlier Tulsa hung jury and prospective retrial, and May 14–15 convention messages pledge defense support. A retrial announcement is not a conviction or new admission.
The One Big Union Monthly, June 1920, vol. 2 no. 6, PDF page 15.
