Biography
Carl Williams was an Evarts miner jailed in the Harlan roundup after the 5 May 1931 Battle of Evarts, one of the more than a hundred National Miners' Union miners and sympathizers jailed in the Harlan County, Kentucky coal war. The Harlan County, Kentucky coal war of 1931 pitted the Communist-led National Miners' Union against the operators, Sheriff John Henry Blair's deputies, and the state militia. After the 5 May 1931 "Battle of Evarts," in which a gun battle left several dead, more than a hundred miners were jailed: dozens were indicted for murder and faced the electric chair, dozens more charged with "banding and confederating" or criminal syndicalism. Clarence Darrow and the ILD led the defense.
The New Leader of January14,1933 names CarlWilliams with AlBenson and BillTurpin as first-degree-murder defendants in the Evarts case. The report identifies Williams and Benson as Evarts policemen during the strike, and DanielR.Smith as a defense attorney.
Hevener describes a separate December 1, 1934 arrest while Williams accompanied a union organizing delegation to the New Harlan Hotel. Deputies charged him with carrying a concealed weapon, which he denied; George Lee struck him with a pistol. Williams spent the weekend in county jail and was freed of all charges. This is a later detention after the Evarts prosecution, not a new outcome for the 1931 arrest.
John Watts Hevener, A New Deal for Harlan: The Roosevelt Labor Policies in a Kentucky Coal Field, 1931–1939 (Ohio State University PhD dissertation, 1971), printed pages 211 (PDF pages 220). Source 805 SHA256 03766c260a4cf06629fb296358baf9e49448a191f9d290929ecd947963b0e125.
The Senate report explicitly states that Williams was confined in jail for three days, December 1–4, 1934, and released when no witnesses appeared before Judge Saylor on the concealed-weapons charge. This supplies the discharge day missing from the later dissertation account.
U.S. Senate, Violations of Free Speech and Rights of Labor, Senate Report No. 6, 76th Congress, 1st session (1939), part 2, printed 69, 70, PDF 299, 300.
