Biography
George Hopkins was a Black unemployed worker prosecuted after the May 1934 relief demonstration at the Federal Emergency Relief Administration headquarters in Oklahoma City. The government charged the demonstrators with conspiracy to seize federal property under the federal sedition statute. Judge Edgar S. Vaught sentenced Hopkins to eighteen months in jail and a $500 fine, which was also to be worked out in confinement. International Labor Defense lawyers supported the defendants' appeal.
The Daily Worker reported the filing of the Oklahoma relief-demonstration defendants’ appeal on March 4, 1935, with J. O. Cooke and Stanley Beldon named as counsel. The report described the convictions as arising from the preceding May demonstration. Its stated prison terms are imposed sentences, not newly established actual service; the appeal-funding deadlines were prospective. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n055-NAT-mar-05-1935-DW-Q.pdf#page=3
The Daily Worker of March 4, 1935, page 1, in an Oklahoma City March 3 dispatch, reports the ten relief-demonstration defendants sentenced yesterday, March 2. It individually names Hopkins as receiving eighteen months and Conners as receiving one year, describes Conners as a Black mother of two, and identifies Judge Edward Vaught and prosecutor W. Lewis. The contemporary one-year summary for Conners is retained alongside the more specific existing year-and-a-day account; it does not replace that sentence or establish actual service. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n054-NAT-mar-04-1935-DW-Q.pdf
An anonymous Oklahoma City correspondent signing H in the February5,1936 Daily Worker says he had just left federal prison after serving a year, with four months in hospital, and says George Hopkins had received six months longer because he was Black. This independently corroborates the racial disparity in the already recorded relief-protest case. The writer's first-person duration and illness are not assigned to Hopkins, and the report does not establish Hopkins's release or actual served total. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1936/v13-n031-NY-feb-05-1936-DW-Q.pdf#page=8
PDF page 12 individually names the four Oklahoma City defendants in the federal relief-demonstration prosecution stemming from May 21, 1934. It reports charges of attempting to seize federal goods, interfering with officers and conspiracy, with a January trial still prospective. The text inconsistently says four jailed since May plus a fourth rearrested after recognizance, without identifying who had that bail interval; it cannot establish uninterrupted May-to-January custody for every man or supersede later individual sentences. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1935/v11n01-jan-1935-orig-LD.pdf
Labor Defender, February 1936, PDF page 22: His signed Christmas letter is sent from Leavenworth Penitentiary and thanks supporters for tobacco and newspapers. This confirms intermediate confinement without exact intake, release or total service. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1936/v12-%5B10%5Dn02-feb-1936-orig-LD.pdf#page=22
Actual Leavenworth custody reported in December 1935
The December 28, 1935 Daily Worker, page 6, describes Hopkins as then imprisoned at Leavenworth in the federal Oklahoma sedition case arising from relief organizing. It is point-in-time evidence of actual custody, not just an imposed sentence. It supplies neither a prison-entry day nor an actual release, and does not by itself prove uninterrupted custody from the May 1934 arrest. The existing eighteen-month sentence and $500 fine are not converted into invented endpoints or a counter.
An Oklahoma City protest letter individually identifies George Wilson, R. A. Seymour, George Taylor and George Hopkins as still held from the May 21, 1934 relief demonstration. It describes police and firemen dispersing the demonstration and prosecutor W. C. Lewis minimizing the underlying conduct while using federal conspiracy provisions. This corroborates continuing detention before the later convictions; neither the prospective maximum faced by the separate protest-letter defendants nor their raids are assigned as a new case to these four.
Labor Defender, January 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.