Leon Frank Czolgosz

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Leon Frank Czolgosz bigraphy, stories - Steel worker and assassin of U.S. President William McKinley

Leon Frank Czolgosz : biography

May 1873 – October 29, 1901

Leon Frank Czolgosz (Polish form: Czołgosz,http://www.moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/czolgosz.html, http://www.moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/czo%25C5%2582gosz.html ; May 1873October 29, 1901; also used surname “Nieman” and variations thereof)Sarah Vowell (2005), , Simon & Schuster p. 214. ISBN 978-0-7432-8253-6 was the assassin of U.S. President William McKinley.

In the last few years of his life, he claimed to have been heavily influenced by anarchists such as Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.

Assassination of President McKinley

On August 31, 1901, Czolgosz traveled to Buffalo, New York, the site of the Pan-American Exposition, where he rented a room at Nowak’s Hotel on 1078 Broadway., Chicago Sunday Tribune, 8 Sep. 1901.

On September 6, he went to the exposition armed with a .32 caliber Iver Johnson “Safety Automatic” revolver (serial #463344) he had purchased four days earlier for $4.50. Czolgosz approached McKinley’s procession, the President having been standing in a receiving line inside of the Temple of Music, greeting the public for 10 minutes. At 4:07 pm Czolgosz reached the front of the line. McKinley extended his hand. Czolgosz slapped it aside and shot the President in the abdomen twice at point blank range. The first bullet ricocheted and lodged in McKinley’s jacket; the other seriously wounded him. McKinley died eight days later of an infection.

Members of the crowd immediately attacked Czolgosz, as McKinley slumped backward. The President said, “Go easy on him boys. He could not have known.” The crowd chained him before the 4th Brigade, National Guard Signal Corps and police intervened. Czolgosz was held in a cell at Buffalo’s 13th Precinct house at 346 Austin Street until he was moved to police headquarters.

Television

Czolgosz was portrayed by Patton Oswalt in the Reaper episode "Leon"http://reaper-cw.wikia.com/wiki/106:_Leon as an escaped soul with the power to change his hand(s) into guns before being (willingly) captured and sent back to Hell. http://reaper-cw.wikia.com/wiki/Leon

Early life

Czolgosz was born in Alpena, Michigan, in 1873, one of eight children of Paul Czolgosz and his wife Mary Nowak, Polish Catholic immigrants.

Czolgosz’s ancestors were probably from what is now Belarus. His father may have immigrated to the US in the 1860s from Ostrowiec/Ostrovets (now Astravets) near Grodno (now Hrodna). When he arrived in the United States, he gave his ethnicity as Hungarian but changed the spelling of his surname from Zholhus (Жолгусь, Żołguś) to Czolgosz.

The Czolgosz family moved to Detroit when Leon was five. At the age of 10, he left his family’s farm in Warrensville, Ohio, to work at the American Steel and Wire Company with two of his older brothers. When the workers of his factory went on strike, Leon and his brothers were fired and returned to the family farm. When he was sixteen, he went to work in a glass factory in Natrona, Pennsylvania, returning home two years later.{}

Interest in anarchism

In 1898, after witnessing a series of similar strikes (many ending in violence), Czolgosz again returned home where he was constantly at odds with his stepmother and with his family’s Roman Catholic beliefs. It was later recounted that through his life he had never shown any interest in friendship or romantic relationships, and was bullied throughout his childhood by peers. He became a recluse and spent much of his time alone reading Socialist and anarchist newspapers. He was impressed after hearing a speech by the political radical Emma Goldman, whom he met for the first time during one of her lectures in Cleveland in 1901. After the lecture Czolgosz approached the speakers’ platform and asked for reading recommendations. A few days later he visited her home in Chicago and introduced himself as Nieman , but Goldman was on her way to the train station. He only had enough time to explain to her about his disappointment in Cleveland’s socialists, and for Goldman to introduce him to her anarchist friends who were at the train station. She later wrote a piece in defense of Czolgosz.