Biography
Belle Martin described her own Birmingham, Alabama arrest while picketing the WPA sewing-room project at Tenth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street with the Ladies Auxiliary of the Hod Carriers Union. In a first-person letter she reported five days in jail before release on $300 bond. An initial inciting-to-riot accusation was changed to unlawful assembly. At a hearing before Judge Abb, prosecutors questioned her about Communism, her husband and interracial labor organizing. She said the case was continued to May 27. No exact arrest or release day or final verdict is provided; the five days describe the completed pretrial episode, not an imposed sentence. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1936/v13-n120-NY-May-19-1936-DW-Q.pdf#page=7
The May 3 Birmingham dispatch in the May 4, 1936 Daily Worker identifies her as Belle Weaver Martin and reports that a preliminary hearing in the WPA sewing-room strike prosecution was postponed before Judge Abernathy. It describes five days in the county jail before release on $300 bond, with the original inciting-to-riot accusation changed to unlawful assembly. The newspaper reports that she was denied outside communications, newspapers and information about her hearing while jailed. This corroborates the five actual days already recorded, rather than adding another episode or another five days; no exact arrest, admission or release day is printed.
The April 17 Birmingham dispatch in the April 18, 1936 Daily Worker reports that armed WPA foremen and officials attacked women picketing the sewing project that day and arrested Belle Weaver Martin, identified as a member of the Bookkeepers, Stenographers and Accountants Union. This supplies the arrest day in the sewing-strike prosecution described in the later accounts already recorded here. Her five actual days in jail before release on bond remain the documented duration; this report supplies no exact physical admission or release day.
