Biography
A. S. Embree was an IWW officer and editor. A. S. Embree was convicted in Shoshone County, Idaho, on June 1, 1921, of violating the state's Criminal Syndicalism Act. Embree, who received a one- to ten-year sentence, had been editor of the Nome Industrial Worker and chairman of the IWW Strike Committee of Bisbee, Arizona. He also served as secretary-treasurer pro tern of the national IWW after the federal raid on the IWW's national office. Embree was paroled on January 9, 1925, and pardoned on January 16, 1926.
The March 1920 One Big Union Monthly prisoner roster provides a contemporaneous procedural account. The roster reports a Spokane federal conspiracy indictment dated September 24, 1917, release on $10,000 bail pending trial, and dismissal. This procedural report does not establish a new custody period. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/one-big-union-monthly/v02n03-mar-1920_One%20Big%20Union.pdf#page=10
1920s custody review October 13, 2026: Ron Roizen's newspaper-based reconstruction dates the Burke arrest May 23, 1920 and distinguishes the later state-prison transfer from sentencing. Industrial Worker independently places entry into Idaho prison in 1921. The case is corrected from federal espionage/sedition to Idaho criminal syndicalism. Entry is year precision, not January 1 as an actual day; unsupported one-year duration counters are removed. Exact admission and release remain under investigation. The January 1925 parole decision must not automatically be treated as physical discharge, and conflicting accounts of release remain unresolved.
Thompson describes Embree settling in southern Colorado following release from an Idaho criminal-syndicalism sentence and later taking part in the 1927 coal campaign. This establishes a narrative sequence, without resolving the existing uncertainty over the exact Idaho physical-discharge day.
Fred W. Thompson and Jon Bekken, The IWW: Its First 100 Years, physical PDF pages 183. Source179 SHA256 aa128f62023cae68c84b07606880c2cb665c80266f78854951758922bab40afa.
White documents the Shoshone County prosecution led by J.H. McEvers, the defense testimony of imprisoned Wobbly Joe Doyle and lawyer J.F. Emigh, and Embree’s presence at Idaho State Penitentiary in the June 1921 photograph. He describes Embree declining release applications for years. A cited October 1924 parole letter and the existing January 1925 account leave the physical-discharge chronology unresolved; neither publication nor parole decision is installed as a new gate date.
Ahmed White, Under the Iron Heel (University of California Press, 2022), physical PDF pages [184, 185, 186, 217] (printed page = physical minus 11); source193 SHA256 7c24fb0ba336fcbf379fb9720f70dcdbf754d796a50dee77b39e38e0f9bd2868.
