Biography
Charles Stadtfeld was a Communist Party district secretary in Indianapolis and a member of presidential candidate Earl Browder’s campaign party arrested at Terre Haute, Indiana on September 30, 1936. Police jailed the whole party — Browder, the writers Waldo Frank and Seymour Waldman, Stadtfeld and Andrew Remes — on a vagrancy charge in an effort to keep the campaign from speaking; all were held about 25 hours and released the next day with the charges dropped.
The October 1 Associated Press dispatch reports that Police Chief James C. Yates released Browder and four associates from Terre Haute jail that day after their arrest the preceding morning. It individually identifies novelist Waldo Frank, national election-campaign committee member Seymour Waldman, Indiana state chairman Charles Stadtfeld and party worker Andrew Remes. Browder’s vagrancy arrest at the train station prevented his planned speech. Attorney David J. Bentall announced an intention to sue the mayor and police chief for false imprisonment; that statement is not proof that a suit was filed or damages awarded. The overnight confinement is actual custody; the account does not itself measure a precise number of hours.
