Biography
Anderson McPherson was a nineteen-year-old Black worker from Cincinnati prosecuted in Crescent Springs, Kentucky, in 1930. International Labor Defense took up his case, saying he had been arrested while returning from a visit to his parents in Georgia after asking for food at a house. He was accused of assaulting a white woman. The defense challenged conflicting accounts of the alleged attack and protested threats of lynching and his confinement without visits from his sister. The case became part of the organization's campaign against racial terror and death prosecutions.
International Press Correspondence, June 5, 1930, printed page 488 (PDF 4): Engdahl prints the name in the order McPherson Anderson and identifies a Black youth facing a capital prosecution at Crescent Springs, Kentucky, saying a death sentence had been pronounced. Location, year and racial-terror case context link this reversed-name reference to the existing Anderson McPherson record. This is an attributed contemporary report, not proof an execution occurred or a precise sentence or custody date. No separate person or case is created from the reversed name. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1930/v10n27-jun-05-1930-inprecor-Virginia.pdf
The International Labor Defense appeal reprinted in Amauta, June–July 1930, printed page 78, says Crescent Springs police chief and officers bound McPherson and placed him under arrest after he asked a white household for food while traveling home from visiting his parents in Georgia. The appeal reports his sister denied visits and weapons placed around the prison to intimidate the prospective jury. It describes a grand-jury accusation and a jury still to be selected; its language about the gallows is an anticipated danger, not proof of execution. This procedural description differs from the separate June 5, 1930 Inprecor report of an already pronounced death sentence; the reprint supplies no dispatch date to settle that sequence. No exact arrest day, execution, completed custody total or actual release is inferred. Source: https://www.viajaraperu.com/media/revistas/amauta/amauta-ano-5-num-31-1930.pdf#page=82
