Biography
Alcee Samuels was a Black chief cook living in Brooklyn. The Daily Worker of October 3, 1933 reports that police accused him of attempted pickpocketing after he asked a subway passenger for a match at the West Side 23rd Street station. He received a sixty-day Welfare Island sentence without a complaining witness. He told the paper that he actually remained imprisoned for more than sixty days because illness prevented coal-pile labor and officials extended his confinement as punishment. He also reported a broken jaw and head injuries inflicted by guards when he asked for his own clothes. He left prison on Saturday, September 30, 1933. The exact admission and complete duration remain unknown. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1933/v10-n237-oct-03-1933-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2 The article describes him as twenty-nine years old and born in Bordeaux, France, on July 4, without establishing an exact birth year.
