Biography
Anna Rasefsky was a miner's wife jailed at Canonsburg, Pennsylvania in the strike during the National Miners' Union coal strike that swept Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia in the summer of 1931, when more than a thousand strikers, their wives and children were arrested.
The Daily Worker of January 4, 1932, page 3, explicitly names Anna Rasefsky among the 1931 coal-strike prisoners still confined in the Allegheny County Workhouse at Blawnox. The report supplies continued-custody evidence without a new individual arrest day, sentence, transfer date or release date.
The September 29, 1931 Washington County defense report, printing Rosefske, says that $10,000 bail had secured Anna and Stella’s release. The committee had raised only $5,000 of the $8,000 needed for Leo Thompson, so his release was still pending. This interim freedom precedes the later Blawnox imprisonment; no continuous span from the earlier arrest through final release is inferred. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n235-NY-sep-30-1931-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
A letter dated February 7, 1933 at Meadow Lands, Pennsylvania, signed Mrs. Anna Rasefske, reports that she was adjusting to freedom after fourteen months in Blawnox Prison and thanks the ILD for five dollars in relief. She says Stella remained imprisoned. The fourteen months is an explicitly reported completed period, not the nominal eighteen-month sentence or a continuous total across the separately documented 1931 bail interruption. The letter dates correspondence, not her exact physical release. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1933/v09n03-mar-1933-lab-def.pdf#page=21
Labor Defender, October 1932 (PDF page 21): The Blawnox roster prints Anna Rasefske and identifies her as Stella’s mother, reporting a nominal eighteen-month sentence while Stella had two years. It describes the miner father and two other children as active in the strike and the family as destitute. This October 1932 custody report does not alter her later documented release. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1932/v08n10-oct-1932-LD.pdf#page=21
Printed Anna Rasefske, she is paired with Mike Sklarski as a militant coal-strike prisoner paroled from Blawnox after two years. The report supplies no exact parole day and does not resolve the intermediate bail gap already documented in her record; no uninterrupted two-year actual total is inserted.
In a letter published in the October 31, 1931 Daily Worker, Mary Rasefske identifies Anna as her mother and reports a sentence of one year and six months in the workhouse. This is a reported imposed sentence, not time actually served; the undated letter does not establish exact custody dates.
Daily Worker, October 31, 1931, page 3, Mary Rasefske letter and sentence roster.
Pages1and3 report the Canonsburg prosecution after the July19 confrontation,with JudgeCummins charging the jury. The bulletin explicitly says Anna was convicted only of unlawfulassembly and PeterWagner acquitted on all counts. The page1 bulletin and detailed trial roster disagree: the bulletin lists MaryRasefski,StanleyBarko,MikeSkwarlo,MikeSholtz and BessieKowlenski,while the detailed account lists StellaRasefske,EdgarGreene,HenryStark,WillMcQueen,JuliusHollis and LouisFazzio. No unsupported individual conviction is inferred from this conflict. Defense allegations of judicial bias,witness misconduct and restricted access are attributed,not independent findings.
The April article calls Stella’s mother Mrs. Mary Rasefsky, gives the same eighteen-month nominal term and says she had just been released. Other sources identify that mother as Anna, including her signed February1933 letter. The family relationship, place and sentence support corroboration while the conflicting printed forename is explicitly preserved, not adopted as an alias or a second mother profile. Her reported fourteen months actually served remains distinct from the eighteen-month imposed term.
