Angelo Herndon collection 1934-1938

  1. Resources
  2. View Resource

ArchivalResource

Angelo Herndon collection 1934-1938

http://archives.nypl.org/scm/20596

Angelo Herndon was a labor and Communist Party organizer who was convicted and sentenced to twenty years hard labor on charges of attempting to incite insurrection in Georgia in 1932. He had led a demonstration of unemployed African Americans and whites to protest cuts in relief rations, and was later arrested for possessing Communist literature and charged with insurrection. The latter charge was based on an 1861 anti-slavery insurrection law. Herndon's case was a cause celebre among leftist and civil rights circles. He was released from prison before serving the full term, through the efforts of these organizations, particularly the International Labor Defense. The Angelo Herndon collection consist of correspondence, several legal briefs from the Supreme Court of Georgia, a printed article concerning the legal case, and miscellaneous papers.

27 items (1 folder)

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Archives Section

Information

SNAC Resource ID: 6316891

Related Entities

There are 1 Entities related to this resource.

Herndon, Angelo, 1913-1997

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6ww7kt9 (person)

Communist Party organizer in Georgia and renowned African-American political prisoner in the 1930s. Angelo Herndon, who helped organized a protest march of Black and white unemployed workers in Atlanta in 1932, was found guilty of "inciting to insurrection" in a Fulton County court, under an 1861 slave stature, and condemned to 18 to 20 years on a Georgia chain gang. A petition drive for his release organized by the International Labor Defense collected two million signatures. Freed on bail in D...