Biography
O.C. Bland was a member of the Centralia, Washington IWW local and one of the seven Wobblies convicted following the Centralia Tragedy of November 11, 1919. Convicted of second-degree murder, he was sentenced to 25 to 40 years at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla and was paroled in the early 1930s following the long Centralia defense campaign.
One of the eight IWW defendants tried at Montesano (Grays Harbor County), WA from January 26 to March 13, 1920 for the deaths of four American Legionnaires (Warren Grimm, Arthur McElfresh, Ben Casagranda, Dale Hubbard) during the Armistice Day, November 11, 1919 attack on the Centralia, WA IWW union hall. Convicted of 2nd-degree murder despite the IWW's defense that they were defending the union hall from an armed mob. Sentenced to 25-40 years at the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla. The case became a long-running cause célèbre of the IWW and the labor left, with the Centralia Publicity Committee and later the Free Ray Becker Committee organizing for parole and pardon over two decades.
The December 24, 1931 Seattle dispatch published December 25 reports that Governor Hartley extended parole to Eugene Barnett and O. C. Bland, while four Centralia defendants remained at Walla Walla. It separately recalls an earlier temporary parole for Barnett to care for his sick wife. The parole announcement is retained as a legal event rather than an exact physical prison-exit day; Barnett’s separately documented May 1931 departure remains distinct from later executive parole. Bland’s stored April 1932 endpoint conflicts with the earlier report and is not used here to assert a complete duration. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n309-NY-dec-25-1931-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
The September 8, 1930 Laisve, page 5, reproduces an International Labor Defense political-prisoner directory. Its row prints O. C. Bland, a term of 25–40 years, the year 1919 in the sentencing-year column, and confinement or correspondence location Walla Walla, Washington, Box 520. This is an attributed historical directory entry; printed years and nominal terms are not exact intake dates or measured time served, and mailing boxes do not independently identify a prison. The directory contains stale or conflicting chronology, so this row does not override independently established conviction, death or release facts. Source: https://www.spauda2.org/laisve/archive/1930/1930-09-08-LAISVE.pdf#page=5
Page 3's Fred Beal appeal individually names the eight Centralia prisoners, placing them at Walla Walla and urging that they not be left to rot in prison. It recalls the November 11, 1919 confrontation and Wesley Everest's lynching. The ten-year anniversary is a rounded elapsed observation across the case history, not an independently measured uninterrupted individual custody total or new conviction. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n213-NY-nov-12-1929-DW-LOC.pdf
The Medford Mail Tribune, December 18, 1931, page 1 names O. C. Bland and Eugene Barnett among Governor Hartley’s Christmas parole recipients, intended to leave before Christmas. This is a contemporaneous administrative-parole report, not an executed gate-discharge record. It raises a conflict with Bland’s currently stored April 5, 1932 release day. That exact physical-release date remains to be checked against institutional records; December 18 has not been substituted for it, and Barnett’s separate leave history has not been overwritten.
The Daily Worker, December 17, 1924, page 5, individually prints O. C. Bland’s historical Walla Walla prisoner number as 9409. This is an institutional register number, not a federal BOP number. No custody endpoint or duration is derived.
Ella Reeve Bloor’s first-person visit names eight Centralia prisoners at Walla Walla: Britt Smith, Ray Becker, O. C. Bland, Bert/J. Bland, Eugene Barnett, James McInerney, John Lamb and Loren Roberts. She describes ILD monthly support and book requests. The seven-man photograph individually identifies standing Bert Bland, John Lamb, Britt Smith and Jas. McInnery, and kneeling O. C. Bland, Ray Becker and Eugene Barnett; Loren Roberts is not pictured. The article’s internal thirteenth-year phrase conflicts with its ten-year history and is not used as a measured duration.
Ben Hur Lampman’s Centralia: Tragedy and Trial, printed pages 69–70 (PDF pages 70–71), individually lists the seven men convicted of second-degree murder, then states that Judge Wilson imposed the twenty-five-to-forty-year sentences on April 5, 1920 at Montesano. March 13 was the jury verdict, as separately dated in Ralph Chaplin’s Centralia Conspiracy, printed page 77 (PDF page 79). The sentencing field is corrected to April 5; that date is not used to infer initial physical custody or a completed time served. These contemporary accounts strongly disagree about culpability and the shooting chronology; their advocacy is not adopted as an unqualified factual finding.
Ben Hur Lampman, Centralia: Tragedy and Trial (1920), printed pp. 69–70.
The Centralia retrospective names O. C. Bland among those previously paroled. Its undated retrospective reference does not resolve the conflicting earlier dates preserved in the existing record.
The Behind the Bars directory on printed page 4 lists this prisoner under Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla, Washington, with twenty-five to forty years, 1919. This is an attributed historical directory entry: the year and nominal term do not establish an intake day, uninterrupted imprisonment, completed service or physical release.
Daily Worker, November 12, 1929; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Governor Hartley’s clemency report in the 1933 Washington Senate Journal records executive parole granted to O. C. Bland on December 16, 1931, on the recommendation of the superintendent and parole board of the State Penitentiary. It separately gives April 5, 1920 as the sentencing date and a nominal term of twenty-five to forty years for second-degree murder from Grays Harbor County. This primary administrative grant supplies a more precise legal-event date than the December newspaper announcements, but does not establish an executed physical release day or resolve the stored April 1932 release conflict. No actual custody total is inferred.
Washington Senate Journal, Twenty-third Legislature (1933), physical and printed page 58.
The May 1920 issue individually identifies him in a photograph of eleven Centralia defendants outside the Montesano jail. The caption’s Roy Becker refers to Centralia defendant Ray Becker, not the separate Omaha prisoner Roy Becker. The accompanying March 15 Not Guilty verdict was issued by six labor observers acting as an independent labor jury; it was not the official court verdict and does not acquit all eleven defendants. The official seven convictions and individual dismissals/acquittals remain distinct.
The One Big Union Monthly, May 1920, vol. 2 no. 5, PDF page 11.
