Biography
Frank Perkins was a local United Mine Workers leader jailed in the 1931 Harlan County miners’ struggle. In James S. Allen’s Organizing in the Depression South (published 2001, preface dated January 1984), Allen reports that deputies charged Perkins with criminal syndicalism after finding a copy of the Southern Worker in his home. His wife wrote to the newspaper about the arrest and asked that it continue to be sent to her. The account establishes actual jail confinement and a union-related prosecution, but gives no exact individual arrest, physical admission, release, sentence or complete custody total. Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/allen/organizing-south.pdf#page=71
Sources
The New Leader of June 20, 1931, page 5, reported that Frank Perkins was arrested and jailed for criminal syndicalism after officers found IWW literature in his home. According to miner Bill Gibbs, Perkins and other miners had just returned from a two-day trip collecting food and money for miners' families in Sunshine; Mrs. Perkins said the literature had arrived by mail while her husband was away. The report named Deputy Heywood as leading the search. This contemporary account identifies the material as IWW leaflets, while the later Allen account already cited here identifies a copy of the Southern Worker; both accounts remain attributed. The two-day journey was relief work, not a measured jail stay, and the report supplies no exact custody endpoints.
The New Leader, June 20, 1931, original page 5, continuation of the Harlan report begun on page 1.
