Biography
Frank Guido was a Tampa-born leader of the Young Pioneers. Police arrested him while he was speaking at an anti-war meeting and also seized a worker named Comas. They held and beat both men at the police station without charges, then handed them to a masked group of American Legionnaires at two in the morning. The gang took Guido to a swamp, beat him, broke his nose and knocked out his teeth, then left him with a sack over his head and a noose around his neck. He escaped and walked fifteen miles back to Tampa.
Labor Defender, July 1932, recounts the Tampa antiwar-meeting arrests of Guido and Comas, police-station beatings without charges, and handover to masked Legionnaires at two in the morning. It describes Guido’s subsequent swamp torture and escape; Comas’s later fate is unspecified. This corroborates the already recorded incident. General references to other Tampa prisoners’ five-month detention or ten-year sentences are not assigned to either man. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1932/v08n07-jul-1932-LD.pdf#page=13
The December 16, 1932 Tampa account, printing Franky Guido, recalls the Young Pioneers organizer’s antiwar-meeting arrest and police handover to a vigilante group linked by the paper to the Secret Committee, Klan and Legion. It describes a ride, beating and demand that he leave Florida. This corroborates the established Guido episode without adding an unmeasured new detention or inventing the unnamed Puerto Rican companion’s identity. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n300-NY-dec-16-1932-DW-LOC.pdf#page=4
