Biography
Bill Gebert was a Chicago Communist Party organizer and labor leader indicted with six other Communist workers under Illinois's criminal-syndicalism law by December 1931. The prosecution arose from organizing among Illinois coal miners. The indictment remained pending in 1934, when labor publications cited it among the attacks on Communist organizers.
Daily Worker, October 25, 1934, page 3: An Illinois election article describes the revival of criminal-syndicalism indictments from the Orient mine strike approximately three years earlier, naming B. K. Gebert, Ralph Shaw and Clara Saffern among the defendants. This supplies the strike locality and printed form of his name to the existing indictment; it does not establish actual arrest or jail confinement.
In his own article printed December 11, 1931, Gebert states that Chicago police raided Communist Party headquarters on November 14 and seized him with eighteen others. The continuation on page 3 describes immigration authorities refusing his release even after bond was posted until after the Franklin County grand jury met, and refers to the day of his eventual release. This firsthand account establishes actual arrest and confinement absent from the previously reviewed 1934 article. It does not give an exact physical discharge or completed duration. The proposed February 1932 trial remained prospective. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n297-NY-dec-11-1931-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
The November 27, 1931 Daily Worker names Bill Gebert, Communist district organizer, and Joe Tash, National Miners Union national organizer, as arrested and indicted with six unnamed comrades under Illinois criminal-syndicalism law. The original image clearly prints Gebert, despite OCR reading Gibert. This corroborates the existing Illinois cases; it gives no additional exact intake, discharge or completed term. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n285-NY-nov-27-1931-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
In April 1935 Gebert argued for a labor party based on trade unions and workplace organization, equal participation of Black workers, public works and social insurance. He criticized local electoral coalitions that hid Communist identity or adopted platforms deferential to existing authority, contrasting them with the labor-unity program in Staunton, Illinois. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n095-NAT-apr-20-1935-DW-Q.pdf#page=5
The November 17 report places them in Benton County jail on criminal-syndicalism charges after the Chicago party-headquarters raid, with $5,000 bail each. The November 20 issue says they remained held despite dismissal of the broader Chicago cases. No new arrest or complete duration is inferred. Daily Worker, November 18, 1931, original PDF page 2. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n277-NY-nov-18-1931-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2
The November 25 Chicago dispatch lists Gebert among seven indicted by the Franklin County grand jury for criminal syndicalism. An indictment is established; this issue supplies no completed sentence or new physical release day.
