Biography
Amy Schechter was a Workers International Relief organizer and one of the three women charged with murder. Amy Schechter was one of the sixteen Gastonia defendants held in the Gaston County jail on the first-degree murder charge — facing the electric chair — after the 7 June 1929 killing of Police Chief Aderholt. The murder charge against the defendants outside the convicted seven was dropped before the October retrial. On 7 June 1929, police attacked the National Textile Workers Union tent colony at the Loray Mill in Gastonia, North Carolina, and Police Chief O. F. Aderholt was killed in the exchange of fire. Sixteen strikers and organizers were charged with his murder — a frame-up, the defense held, aimed at breaking the communist-led Southern textile drive. The International Labor Defense mounted a national campaign for the Gastonia defendants.
The June 19, 1929 Charlotte dispatch reports the murder accusation dropped and reinstated about an hour later before Judge Harding after the prosecution called the dismissal a mistake. It does not establish a physical release between the rulings. Schechter’s account describes being in the inner office with Vera Bush, Sophie Melvin and Clarence Miller during the June 7 shooting, and describes questions about religion and ideology during the proceeding. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n089-NY-jun-20-1929-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2
Daily Worker, June 10, 1929, page 2: Printed Amy Shechter, she is individually named among those arrested as manager of the Gastonia Workers International Relief station. The report places the arrests amid destruction of the tent colony and suppression of strike feeding; it supplies no independent final release or complete custody total. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n080-NY-jun-10-1929-DW-LOC.pdf
Daily Worker, June 14, 1929, page 1–2: The June 13 bulletin names this prisoner under assault with intent to kill, alongside fifty-two unnamed people. This records the accusation at that stage of the Gastonia case, not a separate prosecution or final verdict. Page 2 reproduces a jail telegram signed with Drew and Vera Buch seeking transfers, an appeal of thirty-day vagrancy sentences and food for prisoners; the collective terms are not assigned individually to her. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n084-NY-jun-14-1929-DW-LOC.pdf
Daily Worker, July 22, 1929, page 3: Liston Oak’s July 21 dispatch names this existing Gastonia defendant among possible targets of the prosecution’s effort to narrow the case. The predicted reduction or dismissal of some charges is prospective. Fifteen remained in Gaston County jail and eight others were out on bonds collectively; this does not establish a new individual release or the final October verdict. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n116-NY-jul-22-1929-DW-LOC.pdf
The August 26, 1929 report names this defendant among the sixteen assembled for the Charlotte Gastonia trial before Judge M. V. Barnhill. It distinguishes nine Southern Loray workers from seven organizers and discusses the defense’s planned police-violence evidence. The allegations are attributed defense accounts. Trial appearance is not a new arrest or proof that a previously bailed defendant had been returned to jail; later convictions and individually established bail releases remain separate. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n146-NY-aug-26-1929-DW-LOC.pdf#page=5
The March 15, 1930 Daily Worker reports Lunacy accusation in Chattanooga during March 1930 unemployment-demonstration repression. It places these accusations in Chattanooga, where seven were arrested March 6. This is distinct from Schechter’s 1929 Gastonia prosecution. The group chronology does not explicitly fix an individual arrest or physical discharge day, and no total duration is inferred. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1930/v06-n319-NY-mar-15-1930-DW-LOC.pdf#page=5 This is retained as an attributed report of accusations; individual physical detention is not established here, so no additional custody case is created.
Liston Oak’s August 2 dispatch reports this defendant’s actual release that day on $5,000 bail posted by the ILD, after detention since the June 7 shooting. It says the accusation had been reduced to second-degree murder and records the women’s opposition to being favored over their male co-defendants. They donated their jail library to the remaining prisoners. This corroborates the already stored release; the August 26 trial and announced defense tour were future events, not another custody phase. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n129-NY-aug-06-1929-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1 Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n127-NY-aug-03-1929-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
The October 4, 1929 Gastonia report individually names the nine defendants physically released Monday, September 30 after the prosecution ceased pursuing them in the Aderholt murder case. Its collective four-month description is not an individually measured custody total. This is the existing Gastonia prosecution. Daily Worker, October 4, 1929, original PDF page 1. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n180-NY-oct-04-1929-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
1920s custody-date review: The Daily Worker of August 3, 1929, page 1, carries Liston Oak's Gastonia dispatch dated August 2. It names Amy Schechter, Vera Buch and Sophie Melvin, states that all three had been jailed since the June 7 shooting, and reports their completed release that day on $5,000 bail each. This establishes August 2 as their bail-release date, not the later dismissal of charges. Vera Buch is also spelled Bush in the headline. The separate later proceedings in Sophie Melvin's record are unchanged.
Sources: Daily Worker, August 3, 1929, page 1; June 8 Gastonia Gazette report, transcribed by ANCHOR, independently naming Schechter and Bush among those arrested the preceding night. Existing portraits retained.
The Jewish Criterion of August 16, 1929, page 9, identifies Amy Schechter as the daughter of the late Dr. Solomon Schechter. Its August 13 Jewish Telegraphic Agency dispatch reports that she and Vera Buch, out on bail pending the Gastonia trial, addressed 1,500 people at New York’s Central Opera House on Monday evening, August 12. This documents public activity after bail without replacing the existing earlier bail-release date or treating the pending murder accusation as a conviction.
Jewish Criterion, August 16, 1929, original page 9 (JTA dispatch August 13).
Daily Worker, June 10, 1929; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Daily Worker, June 14, 1929; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Daily Worker, July 22, 1929; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
