Biography
Charles Grant was an ironworker and Industrial Workers of the World activist who participated in free speech campaigns on the Pacific coast. During the San Diego free speech fight of February 1912, police arrested him in the opening protest against the city’s street-speaking ordinance. Hartwell S. Shippey’s contemporary report identifies Grant among the protesters held overnight in the city jail. Grant was tried for conspiracy to violate the ordinance and was acquitted in August 1912.
Contemporary San Diego prosecution roster
The roster identifies Charles Grant as an ironworker and IWW member. Its group arrest statement is an attributed lead about the opening street-speaking protest, not proof that he stayed in jail until the July trial. His separately documented overnight detention and later acquittal are not replaced by the issue’s generalized references to prisoners held for months.
The July 29 dispatch describes proceedings under way since July 13 and a clerk’s reading on July 15, with jury selection completed July 19; a later update on page 2 names six convicted defendants and says the other eight were acquitted. Its generalized descriptions of long confinement and unnamed people held for three or four months are not assigned as this person’s actual duration. The statement of fourteen defendants is accompanied by thirteen printed roster names and a J. W. Wright case caption; no missing fourteenth identity is invented. All original case dates, verdict fields, custody totals and timestamps are preserved. The collective February 7 date remains source-attributed because individual records can disagree.
Solidarity, volume 3 number 33, whole number 137, August 10, 1912, original pages 2–3.
