Biography
Ethel Dell was born near Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan in 1912. Her family later moved to Oregon and then to Los Angeles, where she attended junior college and organized domestic workers. Ethel Dell was one of six demonstrators who ran onto the track at the closing ceremony of the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games on August 14, carrying banners demanding freedom for Tom Mooney. Judge Thurmond Clarke sentenced each of them to nine months in jail for disturbing the peace and a public meeting on September 1, 1932. The sentences were reduced to six months on appeal. Dell received an additional fifty-day contempt sentence during the trial. While imprisoned at Lincoln Heights Jail in April 1933, she was the Tom Mooney ticket’s candidate for the Los Angeles Board of Education.
Revolt, October 1932, pages 5-6, individually names the six August 14 Los Angeles Olympic Stadium demonstrators for Tom Mooney's freedom and reports their September 1 sentences of nine months in Los Angeles county jail for disturbing the peace and a public meeting. This is the original imposed term, not nine months of proven service; subsequent appeal and release evidence remains preserved. It reports an additional fifty days for contempt after Dell challenged whether Mooney could obtain justice in that court. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/student-outlook/v01n01-oct-1932-revolt.pdf
Labor Defender, October 1932 (PDF page 19): The Olympic-trial continuation reports a 50-day contempt sentence after her criticism of the court, and a 270-day nominal sentence for the protest defendants, with appeal bail raised from $500 to $1,000. Her contempt disposition is already represented in the existing case; neither nominal term is substituted for actual days served. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1932/v08n10-oct-1932-LD.pdf#page=19
April 1933 jail interview and school-board campaign
The April 24, 1933 Western Worker prints an interview dated April 15 from Lincoln Heights Jail, Los Angeles. It places Ethel Dell physically in a cell while campaigning for the Board of Education and reports a six-month term for the Olympic Games demonstration demanding Tom Mooney’s freedom. The article says five months of her sentence still remained when she returned to her cell. That is a contemporary description of the unexpired imposed term, not proof of an exact admission, discharge or time actually served. It does not justify subtracting five months from six to invent a March admission, nor adding five months to the interview date to invent a release.
Dell told the campaign interviewer that her priorities included food, free school transport, medical and dental care for children, and the right of workers’ organizations to use public schools. The accompanying biographical panel gives her birth year as 1912 near Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and describes her earlier attempt to organize domestic workers; those basic facts and her existing portrait are already recorded here. No duplicate case, changed birthday, endpoint or numerical custody counter is created.
The November 1932 Labor Defender political-prisoner greetings explicitly lists Ethel Dell at Los Angeles Lincoln Heights City Jail. This is a contemporary individually mapped custody observation, not a prison admission date, final discharge or additional conviction. Other names lower on the page identify supporters and organizational branches, not necessarily prisoners.
Revolt, October 1932; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
