Biography
Benjamin J. Davis Jr. was One of twelve Communists sentenced under Dennis v. United States.
Bejamin J. Davis Jr., a chairman of the communist Workers' Party, along with eleven other party leaders were found guilty for advocating the violent overthrow of the United States. None of the defendants ever directly advocated to overthrow the government, but the prosecutor claimed that by supporting an ideology that advocated for violence, they also did by extension. The defendants claimed that their First Amendment freedom of speech rights were violated and they served no "clear and present danger to the nation".
Davis spent 3 years and 4 months in federal prison plus an additional two months in jail for refusing to reveal some fellow communists.
The July 20, 1934 Daily Worker reports his defense conference with Angelo Herndon at Fulton Tower. Davis described being allowed a private interview, receiving letters openly and then facing a turnkey’s accusation about their handling. The article characterizes this as intimidation of Herndon’s defense. It does not report an arrest or new imprisonment of Davis. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n173-jul-20-1934-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
Herndon’s book reproduces a defense summation explicitly credited to Ben Davis Jr. as chief defense trial attorney before the Fulton County petit jury. Davis argues that Herndon was being persecuted for organizing Black and white unemployed workers together and challenges the prosecution’s interpretation of Communist literature. The volume separately captions Davis’s portrait as Herndon’s attorney. This documents Davis’s legal defense work and the arguments he made, not Davis’s own detention or a new case.
