Biography
Donald Bigham was a young Communist organizer and one of the defendants imprisoned in Sacramento’s 1934 criminal-syndicalism prosecution. A contemporary defense biography described an earlier prosecution following unemployed-worker organizing near Winters: he was tried at Dixon, received ninety days for inciting a riot and served the term in the county jail at Fairfield after an unsuccessful appeal.
The Daily Worker of December 12, 1934, page 2, reports that Bigham was the only one of eighteen Sacramento criminal-syndicalism defendants to be tried separately, and that his case received a three-week postponement. The report places the other defendants' proceedings before Judge Dal M. Lemmon and identifies Leo Gallagher as defense attorney. The postponement does not establish a new arrest, sentence or release date.
Daily Worker, February 21, 1935, page 2: Michael Quin’s Sacramento report prints his name as Donald Bingham and says he had been arrested for a separate trial to follow the seventeen-defendant proceeding. It attributes his identification to an August 12, 1934 interview with Norman Mini, a partisan allegation rather than an established finding of betrayal. The separate Sacramento prosecution identifies the existing Donald Bigham case. A prisoner letter coauthored with Martin Wilson in the March 12, 1935 New Masses, pages 16–17, independently places Donald Bigham in Sacramento County Jail facing criminal-syndicalism charges. No exact arrest or release day is supplied. The separate existing Vacaville profile spelled Donald Bingham is retained pending identity reconciliation; no duplicate Sacramento case is created.
Western Worker, July 15, 1932, page 4: The Winters report individually names Bigham with Luther Mincy, Ebel Alonso and Darwin Alonso as taken to Fairfield, held on vagrancy changed to rout, and released after the ILD raised $500 bail each. Trial at Dixon was scheduled for July 18. This adds the earlier 1932 case, separate from the later Sacramento prosecution. The existing Vacaville profile spelled Donald Bingham remains an unresolved identity issue and is not merged. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/westernworker/1932/v1n14-jul-15-1932.pdf
The December 29, 1934 New Militant identifies Donald Bigham as a Young Communist League organizer in its named account of the Sacramento defendants. Its bail and pending-trial descriptions are a contemporary snapshot, separate from later verdicts and prison custody. Source: https://www.themilitant.com/1934/0751/NM0103.pdf#page=1
Footnote 6 of Solow’s August 1935 Sacramento defense pamphlet explicitly says the indictment against Donald Bigham was quashed. This supplies a reported disposition for his separately tried Sacramento indictment; it provides no exact dismissal or jail-discharge day and does not alter the separate 1932 Winters/Dixon case. Source: https://dai.mun.ca/PDFs/radical/UnionSmashinginSacramento.pdf#page=29
The prisoner letter coauthored by Donald Bigham and Martin Wilson recalls this defendant’s earlier life: came from Indiana and aspired to be a pastry cook; the body prints Bingham while the author heading prints Bigham. It identifies all six as young workers drawn to California agricultural labor and union organizing, then held in Sacramento in the1934criminal-syndicalism prosecution. The letter is undated, so its publication on March 12, 1935 is not treated as proof of renewed or uninterrupted custody overriding independently established bail gaps. Its four-to-fifty-six-year exposure is possible punishment, not an imposed sentence. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1935/v14n11-mar-12-1935-NM.pdf#page=22
Sources and evidence limits
Exact dates of the earlier Fairfield custody, exact 1934 admission and eventual physical release are not supplied. No birth year or alternative surname is asserted.
Historical claims are attributed to the contemporary newspaper. No present-day custody status, demographic classification or precise date is inferred.
The defense biography identifies a twenty-three-year-old former pastry cook and union member. It dates a Winters hunger-march prosecution to winter 1931, reporting an unsuccessfully appealed Dixon ninety-day conviction served at Fairfield, with tuberculosis attributed to confinement, and beating/jailing in the 1932 Vacaville strike. Other evidence dates the Winters/Dixon case 1932: chronology conflict is preserved rather than creating another Winters case. PDF page 19 separates his trial from the November 26 Sacramento opening.
