Biography
Charles Cline was an IWW organizer who in September 1913 was part of a group of radical labor activists arrested at Carrizo Springs, Texas while attempting to cross into Mexico to join the Magonista revolutionary movement. After a gunfight with a Texas posse left a deputy dead, Cline was convicted of murder and sentenced to 25 years to life at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville. He was pardoned in 1926 by Texas Governor Miriam 'Ma' Ferguson after a long defense campaign by the IWW, the Mexican Liberal Party, and the General Defense Committee.
The September19,1926 Daily Worker announces that the Texas class-war prisoner had just gained freedom after thirteen years of confinement and was to speak in Chicago. Thirteen years is the report’s approximate retrospective duration; the scheduled September18 speech is not a physical release day. This is Charles Cline, distinct from the unrelated Connecticut playwright Leonard Cline reported in May1927. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n211-Chi-sep-19-1926-DW-LOC.pdf#page=4
The February 1926 defense appeal says Cline, Rangel and four other men remained in the Texas penitentiary while the Fergusons resisted pardon requests from labor and farmer organizations. President Calles’s offer to receive them in Mexico was conditional on future release. The rounded thirteen years does not create an exact day total, nor does the offer establish release or an exile endpoint. The separately documented later August 1926 release is preserved. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n028-NY-feb-13-1926-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
The August 24, 1926 pardon report calls Cline the sole American in the group and an investigator of conditions in Mexico, and asserts that the defense showed he was not near Ortiz’s death. Those are the newspaper’s attributed defense claims. They supplement his recorded labor-organizing history without replacing his conviction, individual nominal sentence or already established August 1926 release. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n190-NY-aug-24-1926-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
1920s custody review: Released in August1926 following a full pardon by Governor MiriamA.Ferguson. The August24,1926 DailyWorker names all six freed men, including this prisoner. An August21dispatch separately discusses the pardon and threatened rearrest. The evidence supports August, not an exact physical-release day; neither the publication day nor the pardon announcement is used as that day.
Sources: Daily Worker, August24,1926, pages1-2; Devine News, August26,1926, page1, including August21dispatch. Existing portraits are retained; no exact admission date is inferred.
The January 28, 1924 issue of The Daily Worker individually listed Charles M. Cline among the political and class-war prisoners at the state prison at Huntsville, Texas, in an appeal to fund newspaper subscriptions for imprisoned people. This is a contemporary custody observation; the publication date does not establish admission, release, or a total period served.
Contemporary labor and defense account, August 1925
Thurber Lewis’s report of the June 28, 1925 founding conference of International Labor Defense names Rangel and Cline among the imprisoned workers for whose unconditional release the organization called. This is contemporary evidence of the existing imprisonment and defense campaign, not a new case or a precise admission, release, or actual-served duration.
The birthday list places Cline at Ferguson Farm, Midway, Texas, birthday July 28 without a birth year. This documents the source’s contemporary custody context without establishing a new admission, precise release or completed-service total.
