Biography
Clark H. Getts was a conscientious objector from Wisconsin imprisoned during World War I. Court-martialed for refusing military service, he was held at Fort Leavenworth. Sentenced to life. (Documented in the Swarthmore College Peace Collection's World War I Conscientious Objectors database.) Archival note: registered on June 5, 1917, as a C.O.; interviewed by Bd. on July 3, 1918 at Camp Grant; charged with Disobedience of Orders; 1st classification = 3; sentenced to life or 75 years (not reduced?); a Socialist
In his first-person Fort Leavenworth account, H. Austin Simons describes Getts as secretary of the prisoners’ strike committee and an effective spokesman among the inmates. Getts also helped teach biology in the prisoners’ night school at the adjoining Wire City stockade. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/culture/pubs/liberator/1919/09/v2n09-w19-sep-1919-liberator.pdf#page=43
Philip Grosser's memoir individually places Clark Getts at Alcatraz, receiving visitors and helping transmit news about prison conditions. This supports an Alcatraz transfer stage in addition to his Leavenworth confinement, without supplying an exact transfer or discharge day. It remains the same wartime military imprisonment, not an additional arrest or a second imposed life term. Source: https://www.thesparrowsnest.org.uk/collections/public_archive/1120.pdf#page=10
The Revolutionary Age of August 9, 1919 prints a letter received by the National Left Wing Conference on June 21, 1919 from political prisoners confined in the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. It lists Clark H. Getts among political prisoners who explicitly said they were not Socialist Party members, endorsing the letter's support for the Left Wing and its political aims. June 21 is the conference's receipt date, not an admission or release date; no individual charge or measured custody total is supplied.
In his first-person Fort Leavenworth account, H. Austin Simons describes Getts as secretary of the prisoners’ strike committee and an effective spokesman among the inmates. Getts also helped teach biology in the prisoners’ night school at the adjoining Wire City stockade.