Angelo Herndon
1937
Angelo Herndon's "You Cannot Kill the Working Class," helped educate Northerners about the injustices in the Southern legal system. Herndon (1913 - 1997) was born into a mining family and as a teenager he joined the Communist party. In 1932 he was arrested after he helped organize a peaceful, interracial march in Atlanta, Georgia. He was tried before an all-white jury for violating an obscure Georgia insurrection law, and sentenced to eighteen to twenty years on a chain gang. The unjust sentence turned Herndon's case into a cause célèbre. Although primarily supported by the International Labor Defense (ILD), a radical legal-action group that often defended minorities, immigrants, and activists, Herndon's case drew national attention and widespread support from civil rights organizations, labor unions, and religious groups. Herndon was finally freed in 1937 after his case was brought before the United States Supreme Court and the law that he was convicted under was found to be unconstitional. (From The Radical Reader edited by Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John McMillian)
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