Dorothy Ray Healey
Biography
Dorothy Ray Healey was the best-known Communist organizer in Southern California, a veteran of the 1930s farm-labor strikes. She was among the fifteen California Communist leaders arrested in July 1951 under the Smith Act and held on heavy bail; convicted in 1952, she won reversal under the Supreme Court's 1957 Yates decision.
Southern California CPUSA chair; "Red Queen"; later DSA VP. Yates defendant; 5 years; conviction reversed by Yates 1957.
Daily Worker, May 24, 1935: Page 4 retrospectively names Dorothy Ray with Stanley Hancock as young organizers sentenced to six months in the Imperial Valley county jail in 1934 for organizing lettuce and pea pickers and leading a strike. The established Dorothy Ray alias identifies her; this is distinct from the later Smith Act prosecution. The relative retrospective dating does not establish exact custody endpoints or actual six-month service. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n124-NAT-may-24-1935-DW-Q.pdf
Pettis Perry's protest letter on page 5 names Emma Cutler and nineteen-year-old Dorothy Ray in El Centro county jail, alleging confinement in heat above 120 degrees, a diet of half-cooked starches and pork, refusal of visitors' milk and fruit and severe weakening of Cutler. It describes approximately six months already confined; that is a contemporary approximate elapsed period, not an independently established completed term. Cutler's arrest for vagrancy is said to have occurred three hours after arrival in the valley. These treatment allegations do not supply exact new admission or release days. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n192-aug-11-1934-DW-LOC.pdf
The June 20 Los Angeles dispatch in the July 2 Western Worker quotes DorothyRay writing from El Centro jail requesting books and back issues of the DailyWorker through the ILD. This corroborates actual confinement in the Imperial Valley episode; it gives no new transfer or release date. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/westernworker/1934/v3-n27-31-jul-1934.pdf#page=3
The study identifies the name variants Dorothy Rosenblum; Dorothy Ray.
Tuomas Savonen, Minnesota, Moscow, Manhattan, 2020, PDF page 113.
Daily Worker, May 24, 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
The Daily Worker of October 13, 1934, page 4, describes Dorothy Ray and Stanley Hancock still held in an Imperial Valley jail after about six months of imprisonment for lettuce-strike organizing. It reports death threats against Hancock, a noose and steel-studded knout sent to him, an open grave bearing his name and a visit by strangers to the sheriff's office. Hancock's mother sought protection and safe conduct for both organizers to San Diego. The stated October 13-19 release window was prospective, and the sheriff allegedly refused to give an exact date; no physical release on those dates is inferred. Police complicity and torture allegations are attributed to the newspaper and quoted appeals.
The November 12 Los Angeles dispatch reports Dorothy Ray freed from El Centro after six months. It attributes illness to extreme heat and poor food without a named medical diagnosis. The planned November 23 banquet does not establish the discharge day. This confirms actual release beyond the earlier prospective October window.
