Preparedness Day bombing

The sidewalk near the corner of Steuart and Market streets holds a heavy brass plaque marking the site of the Preparedness Day bombing. On July twenty-second, nineteen sixteen, a suitcase bomb detonated during a parade, killing ten people and wounding forty more. Thomas Mooney, a labor organizer, was convicted of the attack, despite evidence that he was elsewhere. He spent twenty-two years in prison before his pardon, becoming the center of a national campaign that exposed deep cracks in the local justice system.