Biography
Alexander Wright was a Black Norfolk dockworker and Communist Party organizer who ran for the United States Senate from Virginia in 1934. Police arrested him on August 26 at a campaign meeting in Newport News and held him on a charge of inciting a riot. Wright resumed campaigning after his detention and spoke at a Newport News rally on October 11.
Page 1’s August 27 Newport News dispatch dates Wright’s arrest at a Communist Senate-campaign meeting to August 26 and identifies inciting-to-riot as the charge. It connects the arrest with a prior five-man assault after a Norfolk waterfront speech, which Wright resisted with an axe handle until workers intervened. The newspaper frames both as suppression of Communist election work. No extra custody phase is inferred from the earlier gang assault, and his existing August 26 case is retained. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n206-aug-28-1934-DW-LOC.pdf
