Annie Mae Leathers

Annie Mae Leathers was an Atlanta textile worker and the sister of fellow striker Leah Young. Police arrested her in September 1934 over strike literature on the Exposition Cotton Mill picket line. Georgia charged her with circulating insurrectionary literature under the statute used against Angelo Herndon. While jailed awaiting trial, Leathers reported that a police matron assaulted her to pressure her into dismissing her International Labor Defense attorney. Attorney Louis Tatham represented the women. Both were out on bond by June 1936, with the charges still pending.

Daily Worker, September 8, 1934: Page 2 spells her name “Anna May Leathers” and reports that she and Leah Young, seized while distributing strike leaflets on an Atlanta picket line, had been released on habeas corpus by the September 7 dispatch, with a hearing scheduled for the following day. This is an intermediate release report in the existing prosecution, distinct from the later descriptions of renewed confinement and eventual bond; the issue does not provide an exact physical release day or continuous custody interval. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n216-sep-08-1934-DW-LOC.pdf

The Daily Worker, November 15, 1934, page 2, “Leathers and Young Freed in $1,000 Bail,” in an Atlanta November 13 dispatch, reports that Annie Mae Leathers and Leah Young had actually been freed under $1,000 bail each posted by the International Labor Defense in their textile-strike insurrection prosecution. This places a documented bond release by November 13, 1934, earlier than the June 1936 account already cited. The report’s twenty-year term is explicitly a possible penalty if convicted, not an imposed sentence or actual service; the exact physical release day and final outcome remain unknown. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n273-NY-nov-15-1934-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2

The same November 15 issue, page 6, Ann Barton’s “The Greatest Moment in Her Life,” reprints a Southern Worker account of the sisters’ Atlanta hearing. It says both women rejected offers of release in exchange for betraying fellow workers, and that Leathers was beaten for refusing to abandon her Black ILD attorney, named John Greer in this report. It describes Leah Young addressing a courtroom of Black and white workers for two and a half hours about workers’ solidarity. This is an attributed account of coercion and defense testimony during the existing case, not proof of another arrest, a new sentence or an additional measured custody period. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n273-NY-nov-15-1934-DW-LOC.pdf#page=6

Page 2 prints the September 27 labor/ILD delegation’s demand to Frances Perkins for release of the Atlanta textile pickets, described as Anna Mae and Leah Young, held under the slave insurrection statute used against Herndon. The sister/picketing/Atlanta context connects the Anna Mae reference to Annie Mae Leathers; it is not used to create another Young. This is an advocacy demand, not an exact rearrest or release endpoint, and does not erase earlier habeas release or later bond evidence. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n233-sep-28-1934-DW-LOC.pdf

Leah Young’s first-person account describes the sisters’ September 1934 Exposition Mill picket arrests, $5,000 bail at Fulton Tower and John Geer’s defense. Young says she had not completed first grade and earned twenty-five cents a day as an eleven-year-old mill worker. Her unnamed husband’s twelve-month chain-gang penalty was suspended on probation and is not recorded as twelve months served by him or either sister. Labor Defender, December 1935, original PDF page 11. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1935/v11n12-dec-1935-orig-LD.pdf#page=11