Biography
Charles Coder was a white co-leader of the Dallas unemployment movement in Dallas, Texas in 1931; after a demonstration of four thousand for unemployment insurance, he was jailed and then handed over to the Ku Klux Klan, flogged, and left for dead before being rescued by Black farmers.
The Daily Worker of March 11 and March 13, 1931, reported the Dallas jail beatings and abduction of Coder and Lewis Hurst. The March 13 issue printed their identified photograph and Coder's March 4 letter as acting TUUL organizer, describing the February 25 demonstration, racial solidarity, lack of a union headquarters, and organizing difficulties. Its reports that the men were drowned were premature and false; both survived, as the later history already recorded here establishes. The same issue explicitly says Coder was not arrested at the February 25 demonstration but was picked up afterward, so February 25 is not assigned to him as an exact arrest date.
The March 9 Dallas dispatch printed March 10, 1931 says Coder and Hurst were abducted on the previous Friday after jail release, implying March 6. This conflicts with the independently recorded March 5 chronology. Its claim of a February 25 arrest for both also conflicts with Coder’s later firsthand account. The dates remain attributed alternatives rather than silently replacing existing endpoints; contemporary rumors that they had been killed were subsequently disproven. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n060-NY-mar-10-1931-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2
The March 22 Dallas dispatch describes Coder and Hurst’s kidnapping and brutal beating as organized terror against unemployment organizing and racial equality, contrasting it with claims of spontaneous mob violence. The front page also reports a raid searching for other organizers. This is further context for the existing abduction episode, not a new arrest of Coder.
