The Deadliest School Attack in US History
The Bath School Massacre is often omitted in lists of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. There are a few reasons for this.
On the morning of May 18, 1927, a school board treasurer named Andrew Kehoe blew up a schoolhouse in Bath Township, Mich., killing 44 people (38 children and 6 adults). Another 58 people were injured.
Eyewitnesses later said they could hear the explosion more than a mile away.
The bombing would have been much worse if one timing device had not failed to trigger another 500 pounds of dynamite in the basement of another wing of the schoolhouse.
Kehoe, who murdered his wife shortly before the bomb went off and also firebombed his farm, had lost an election for town clerk and was facing foreclosure. It’s believed he plotted the attack as a sort of revenge killing against the town.
Few Americans know about the Kehoe Bombing (also known as the Bath School Disaster or the Bath School Massacre), and it’s often omitted in lists of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. There are a few reasons for this.
For one, the attack generated surprisingly little national news. “The story made national headlines immediately, but quickly disappeared,” Time magazine writer Katrina Gulliver noted in 2016. “It did not prompt a broader conversation about explosives, or school safety, or mental health, as such an attack today would. Everyone outside Bath Township seemed to forget about it altogether.”
This is perhaps because a couple days after the attack, American aviator Charles Lindbergh set out on his famous Trans-Atlantic crossing. Or perhaps it’s because there was less appetite in the 1920s for grisly accounts of this kind. Whatever the case, the Bath School Massacre was quickly forgotten by almost everyone outside of Michigan.
Another reason few people know of the attack is that it was in some ways, beyond the tragedy itself, forgettable. It was the not the beginning of a trend, which might give it greater historic significance. Nor was it political (unless one counts provincial matters). If Kehoe had been a socialist, anarchist, or religious fanatic instead of a deranged farmer, the attack likely would have had more permanence in our collective memory.
A third reason could be that the Kehoe Bombing doesn’t fit neatly into our modern narrative on mass killings. There is a powerful current of belief that implies our children will be safe if we only get certain tools out of some people’s hands. But the Bath School Disaster, which suggests a determined killer can find all sorts of ways to commit an evil act, runs counter to this narrative.
A final reason could be that the bombing happened a really long time ago and, sadly, most Americans don’t really know or care much about history.
Whatever the case, Kehoe’s act of violence is historically significant, one we’d do well to not ignore.
Thanks, ugh, Jon, another historical Horrible I wish I did not know about. That this multiple murder happened in a school building executed by a parent (guessing with cultural certainty at that time), to me exemplifies the title of a book by Lloyd deMause every parent, now or to come, must read: "The Origins of War in Child Abuse" (here for free download, both digital text and audiobook)
https://psychohistory.com/audiobooks/
https://psychohistory.com/books/the-origins-of-war-in-child-abuse/
I am convinced as a teacher of "Parent Effectiveness Training" https://www.parenteffectivenesstrainingnewzealand.com/ and a Voluntaryist, that the only way we will end this litany of Loss caused by parentally damned and damaged parents perpetuating the damnation and damage upon their own and others’ children—will break the Euripidean "The Sins of the Fathers are visited upon the children" vicious cycle--is by Peaceful Parenting that eschews both punishments and rewards and gives the young ones freedom from birth and shapes the environment, most especially the parents themselves, to enable all to be responsible for that freedom.
As deMause, the founder of The Association for Psychohistory wrote:
“The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken. The further back in history one goes, the lower the level of child care, and the more likely children are to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorized, and sexually abused. The ultimate cause of all wars and human misery is the parental holocaust of children throughout history.
The historical evolution of the psyche is a process that mainly involves removing developmental distortions, so that each psyche can develop in its own way optimally. Culture evolves through the increase of love and freedom for children, so that when they grow up they can invent more adaptive and happier ways of living. Because we were all children before we were adults, childhood evolution must precede social evolution, psychogenesis must precede sociogenesis.
Can we afford not to teach parenting? What more important task can we devote our resources to? If war, social violence, class domination and economic destruction of wealth are really revenge rituals for childhood trauma, how else can we remove the source of these rituals? Do we really want to have massive armies and jails and emotionally crippled adults forever? Must each generation continue to torture and neglect its children so they repeat the violence and economic exploitation of previous generations? Why not achieve meaningful political and social revolution by first achieving a parenting revolution?
History is now a race between too slowly improving childrearing and too fast evolving destructive technology. The crucial task of future generations will be to raise loved children who grow up to be peaceful, rather than walking time bombs. Self-mastery must replace the mastery of others. Global suicide must not continue to be our goal.”