Biography
A. G. Ford was one of the Sacramento defendants prosecuted for criminal syndicalism in 1934-1935 during the campaign against California agricultural union organizing. Ford was among the prisoners held in crowded cells while defense organizations challenged the prosecution. The case was tried before Judge Dal M. Lemmon.
Daily Worker, August 23, 1934, page 1: The Sacramento dispatch individually lists this defendant among seventeen facing six criminal-syndicalism counts. It describes the Sacramento prisoners collectively as crowded fourteen to a cell, with no beds or blankets for two weeks and a hole in the floor for a toilet. The stated six-to-eighty-four-year range was potential exposure if convicted, not an imposed sentence. The account’s unnamed Chinese detainee is not identified with any named defendant.
A Sacramento defense statement dated February 27, 1935, printed in the Daily Worker on March 5, included this defendant among fourteen signers. The statement defended the International Labor Defense and its conduct of the trial and bail campaign against factional criticism. It also named Luther Mincy and John Fisher as acquitted about a week before the statement. Its allegations about other defendants’ cooperation with police are partisan claims, not independently established facts. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n055-NAT-mar-05-1935-DW-Q.pdf#page=3
The complete Sacramento roster on PDF pages 17–18 individually names this defendant among seventeen indicted for criminal syndicalism during the 1934 strike crackdown. Printed variants include Lorent Norman, W. H. Huffine and Harry J. Collentz. The threatened six-to-eighty-four-year range is exposure, not an imposed sentence or actual service. This corroborates the existing Sacramento prosecution; no new arrest, personal prison admission, release day or verdict is inferred from the roster.
