Biography
Ernest Merriwether was a Black boy in Decatur, Alabama detained and subjected to coercive third-degree questioning in an effort to make him admit selling Ozie Powell a knife. A February 23 dispatch in the February 24, 1936 Daily Worker says the attempt failed and Merriwether was released. The paper places this in the authorities' campaign against the Scottsboro defendants after Powell was shot on January 24. No admission or discharge day, age, charge or complete duration is supplied. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1936/v13-n047-NY-feb-24-1936-DW-Q.pdf#page=1
