Biography
Claude Neal was a Black prisoner whose lynching and delivery from Brewton, Alabama jail custody were discussed in the November 12, 1934 Daily Worker. The report attributes responsibility to the sheriff and jailer and criticizes the response of Florida and Alabama officials and federal authorities. It announces a prospective November 19 grand-jury investigation. The article establishes jail custody followed by a fatal mob abduction, but supplies no precise individual intake or death date, charge or measured custody duration. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n270-NY-nov-12-1934-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2
Page 6’s Florida convention report recalls the Marianna lynching and plantation and turpentine-camp terror. It says his widow feared for herself and her son and supporters organized defense. This is attributed aftermath context for the existing case, not a fresh detention of Neal or a claim his widow was arrested. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1936/v13-n138-NY-jun-09-1936-DW-Q.pdf
Joseph North’s June 24, 1936 Florida convention feature attributes details of Claude Neal’s lynching to local informants: a landowner named Counts Green allegedly bought rope at J. W. Beal’s store in Bascom, and Ed Bland allegedly cut two fingers from Neal’s left hand and boasted of carrying them for three days. These are explicitly attributed contemporary allegations about the existing fatal racial mob abduction, not new convictions or independently proved identities of perpetrators. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1936/v13-n151-NY-jun-24-1936-DW-Q.pdf#page=2
Sources
Daily Worker, June 9, 1936; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
The January 11, 1937 Daily Worker explicitly dates Claude Neal's lynching to October 26, 1934. The U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division corroborates that date and describes his removal from Brewton jail before his killing in Florida. This establishes a death date, not a jail release, complete custody duration or precise intake date.
Daily Worker, January 11, 1937, PDF page 5; U.S. Department of Justice, Claude Neal case summary.
