Established by the Communist Party of the United States of America as its legal defense arm in 1925 to aid labor, political prisoners, and victims of reactionary violence. Using mass demonstrations and publicity, the International Labor Defense...
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Established by the Communist Party of the United States of America as its legal defense arm in 1925 to aid labor, political prisoners, and victims of reactionary violence. Using mass demonstrations and publicity, the International Labor Defense (ILD) conducted national and worldwide campaigns to gather support for its cases. In 1946 the ILD merged with the Civil Rights Congress. Minutes, reports, and financial records of the national offfice of ILD. Case files for the Scottsboro case, the widely reported case of nine boys convicted of rape in Scottsboro, Ala., 1931-1936; the case of Angelo Herndon, a black communist convicted and sentenced to death for his activities as an Unemployed Council (a Communist front organization) organizer in Atlanta, 1932-1937; Tom Mooney, an Irish American labor organizer on the West Coast, 1931-1939; Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian American anarchists accused of armed robbery and murder, 1926-1930; Lucy Parsons, the mulatto wife of Albert Parsons, one of the Chicago Haymarket Square martyrs of 1886; and the case of the Gallup, N. Mex., coal mine workers, 1933-1938. Case files include correspondence, news clippings, leaflets, petitions, press releases, manuscripts for books and articles, legal documents and reports, and speeches.
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