Biography
Alfred White was a Black sharecropper and Share Croppers' Union member wounded and arrested in the 19 December 1932 Reeltown, Alabama shootout, one of the survivors tried at Dadeville before Judge W. B. Bowling in 1933 and sentenced to 10 to 10½ years for "assault with intent to murder." (Ned Cobb was later the subject of Theodore Rosengarten's oral history "All God's Dangers.") On 19 December 1932 a sheriff's posse attacked members of the Communist-led Share Croppers' Union near Reeltown in Tallapoosa County, Alabama, when they resisted the seizure of a member's livestock for debt. Several croppers were shot; the survivors were charged with "assault with intent to murder" and held for the grand jury at the Dadeville jail under $750 bail. The case, following the 1931 Camp Hill affair, became a major ILD Southern defense.
The December 26, 1932 Daily Worker explicitly names him among Dadeville prisoners interviewed by ILD attorney Frank B. Irwin after his Thursday, December 22 arrival with Mrs. E. M. Cooper. Cooper was denied access, and sheriffs attended and took notes during the interviews. The article says ten prisoners but lists nine names; no missing identity or additional custody endpoint is invented. Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/herndon/1932/dec-26-1932-DW.pdf#page=3
The January 19, 1933 Dadeville dispatch reports a preliminary hearing the preceding day before Judge Oliver: five Reeltown defendants were held for the grand jury under $750 bail each. Cobb was accused of shooting Clifford Elder and the others of accessory involvement. The defense named Frank B. Irwin and Irving Schwab. This preliminary judge is not substituted for the later trial judge, and the collective account supplies no individual jail intake or discharge. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1933/v010-n017-NY-jan-20-1933-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
The May 2, 1933 Daily Worker reports that the five Reeltown defendants were then confined in the Alabama state penitentiary under long sentences after the Dadeville trial. The defense account describes Cobb shot three times in the back and Simpson wounded at home, his wife struck with a pistol butt, and corroboration by niece Susie Mae Cotton. It identifies Simpson as Cliff James’s brother-in-law and disputes his presence at the cabin. No exact transfer day or complete actual duration is supplied. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1933/v010-n105-NY-scct-one-may-02-1933-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
The January 18, 1933 Dadeville bulletin places this defendant among five held for the grand jury on assault-to-murder charges and sets bail at $750 each (verified on the native page; OCR misreads $150). It says Black spectators were barred while 300 sympathetic white sharecroppers attended and names defense attorneys Schwab and Irwin. Bail being set is not proof of posting or release. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1933/v09n02-feb-1933-lab-def.pdf#page=5
The December 26 report names these detained Tallapoosa sharecroppers while describing the ILD’s attempts to locate and visit the prisoners. It differentiates Dadeville, Montgomery and Tuskegee locations rather than assigning every individual to all three. It supplies no new arrest or complete actual duration. Daily Worker, December 26, 1932, original PDF page 3. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n308-NY-dec-26-1932-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
The Tallapoosa report calls him Alf White and gives ten to ten and one-half years before Judge William B. Bowling. The printed range was checked visually. This corroborates the existing sentence and alias without treating the imposed term as actual service.
The January 9 Birmingham dispatch individually names him among five sharecroppers still jailed after the December 19 Reeltown confrontation. ILD attorney Frank B. Irwin refused the prosecutor’s request to waive preliminary hearings and insisted on the scheduled Wednesday hearing. Other unnamed arrestees had been freed; that collective release is explicitly not assigned to these five. No new sentence or custody endpoint is established.
