Biography
Emma Cutler was a Los Angeles Communist organizer and secretary of the Los Angeles Workers’ School. She was sentenced to ninety days in the Los Angeles County Jail and a $500 fine for taking part in the August 1, 1930, anti-imperialist demonstration. In 1936, she ran for Congress in California’s 13th District against incumbent Charles Kramer. On July 11, police arrested her while she spoke at a Communist Party street meeting on Echo Park Boulevard. They held her at police headquarters for about an hour and released her that night. As an International Labor Defense organizer, she defended arrested agricultural workers in the San Joaquin and Imperial valleys. In 1934, while investigating the arrests of lettuce strikers, she was arrested for vagrancy and served six months in the El Centro jail. She appealed her conviction and sought habeas corpus relief. Her confinement included a release on a writ followed by a return to jail.
Page 1’s August 27 San Diego dispatch names Emma Cutler and Mike Guiterrez Jr. as Imperial Valley prisoners actually out on bail when they appeared before the Fourth District Court of Appeals on habeas corpus. The court refused defense evidence about Imperial Valley terror and postponed decision. The camp, junior designation and co-defendant context connect Mike with the existing Miquel N. Gutierrez Jr. record. Bail establishes an interruption of confinement; postponement is not habeas victory or permanent discharge. The separate five-prisoner transfer from Superstition Mountain to El Centro jail is unnamed and is not assigned individually. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n206-aug-28-1934-DW-LOC.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
PDF page 3's 1934 review says Cutler was given six months for vagrancy two hours after entering Imperial Valley. This corroborates the already recorded strike-defense prosecution; the two-hour interval is not a prison duration and the six-month term is not completed service. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1935/v11n01-jan-1935-orig-LD.pdf
Daily Worker, August 28, 1934; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
The July 20 issue reports that police seized Cutler while she addressed her congressional election rally at Echo Park Avenue and Sunset Boulevard on July 11, 1936. Page 8 specifies about one hour at police headquarters before release that night. Page 2 adds the subsequent protest over officials’ claimed denial of Communist street-speaking rights and the planned renewed meeting. This corroborates the existing July 11 case; the planned July 18 rally is not treated as another arrest.
The page 4 campaign biography identifies Cutler as twenty-seven, a Roosevelt High School graduate whose father was an ironworker and mother a dressmaker, with six years in the Communist Party and five years in ILD work. It reports a 1929 red-flag prosecution with a five-year sentence later reversed and the case dismissed, a 1930 Imperial Valley arrest on suspicion of criminal syndicalism followed by release, 1933 cotton-strike defense work, and the already documented 1934 six-month El Centro vagrancy case. The earlier prosecutions are recorded separately with unknown physical custody endpoints; the imposed five years is not actual service. Page 3 schedules another free-speech meeting after police dispersed a Communist rally, without establishing another personal arrest of Cutler.
The bundle follows the six-month Imperial Valley vagrancy conviction after Cutler arrived to defend lettuce strikers. PDF page 8 reports an unsuccessful appeal and intended return for three remaining months. The later November 26 dispatch on PDF page 21 says she would remain on $1,000 ILD bail pending a U.S. Supreme Court appeal. Intended return is not an actual readmission; later retrospective service evidence remains.
Labor Defender, January 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
A Los Angeles dispatch dated November 8 in the November 10, 1930 Daily Worker reports that Emma Cutler was being held in solitary confinement for demonstrating against imperialist war on August 1. It records a resolution demanding her freedom. This adds a reported condition of the existing 1930 Los Angeles antiwar imprisonment; the demand does not establish release.