Leon Czolgosz

It is generally believed that Leon Frank Czolgosz was born on May 5, 1873 in Alpena, Michigan. However, police documents mention Detroit as his birthplace. There is also confusion about the exact year of his birth.

His parents, Paul Czolgosz and Mary Nowak, were first generation Polish immigrants. They were Roman Catholic by faith and moved to the USA possibly in 1872, after the birth of their third son.

Leon was born fourth of his parents’ ten children, having three elder brothers called Waldek, Frank and Joseph. He also had four younger brothers named Walter, Jacob, John, Michael and two younger sisters called Celia and Victoria. Additionally, he had two half-siblings, Charles and Antoine, from his father’s second marriage.

It is not known what the Czolgoszs did while they were living in Poland. In the USA, Paul worked as a laborer in a factory, earning less than a dollar a day, moving from place to place in search of better prospect.

Possibly in 1878, when Leon was five years old, the family moved to Detroit. After around two years, sometime around 1880, they made another move, this time to Posen, a village in Presque Isle County in the state of Michigan. Here, his father acquired a farm.

Leon Czolgosz’s mother, Mary, died in 1885/1886, six weeks after giving birth to her youngest child, Victoria. Thereafter, Paul sold the farm and returned to Alpena. From there they again moved to Natrona in Pennsylvania. Here, Leon took up his first job at a glass factory.

By 1890, the family had moved to Cleveland, a port city in northeastern Ohio, where seventeen year old Leon began working in the Cleveland Rolling Mill Company. Here he was known as a steady worker and very soon received a merit based pay raise.

In 1893, a serious economic depression caused Cleveland Rolling Mill to shut down its operation temporarily. When it opened its door, it resorted to wage cut, resulting in workers’ strike, causing Leon and his brother, who also worked in the same mill, to lose their job. Leon was also blacklisted.

In 1894, Leon managed to get back his job, calling himself Fred C. Nieman. Incidentally Nieman is a Polish-German surname that means ‘nobody’. However, the incident left a deep mark on his psyche. He began to focus on the inequality between the factory owners and the workers.

The disparity between the rich and the poor greatly angered Leon Czolgosz and slowly he began to turn towards socialist ideals, joining Golden Eagle Society, a moderate social workers’ club. Subsequently, he left Golden Eagle to join more radical Sila Club, where he was introduced to anarchism.

Over a period of time, he came to conclusion that the rich were allowed to gather more wealth at the expense of the poor because of the governmental structure. He tried to join different anarchist groups, but because of his strange behavior, he was avoided by all of them.

By 1896, he had lost faith in the God and the Church. Alienated from the world, he suffered a nervous breakdown in 1898 and lost his job. By then, his father had bought a 55 acre farm in Warrensville, Ohio and Leon now began to live there.

At his father’s farm, he spent his time in reading radical works and never helped in the chores. He also visited Chicago and Detroit frequently, being drawn to big names in anarchic movement such as Emil Schilling of Liberty Club, Abraham Isaak, editor of radical newspaper Free Society and Emma Goldman.

He became more intent in his purpose, when King Umberto I of Italy was assassinated by an anarchist called Gaetano Bresci on July 29, 1900. Bresci had told the press that he shot the King for the sake of the common man and this impressed Czolgosz even more.