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George Wilson

Released
Gender:Male
Race:White
Era:1930s
State:Oklahoma
Support
Communism Labor Organizing
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Biography

George Wilson was an unemployed worker prosecuted after the May 1934 relief demonstration at the Federal Emergency Relief Administration headquarters in Oklahoma City. The government charged the defendants with conspiracy to seize federal property under the federal sedition statute. Judge Edgar S. Vaught sentenced Wilson to a year and a day and a $100 fine. International Labor Defense attorneys J. O. Cook and Stanley Beldon supported the 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

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

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.

Daily Worker, February 13, 1935, PDF page 3.

Labor Defender, January 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.

Case

Charges: Conspiracy to seize federal property under the federal sedition statute, arising from the Oklahoma City relief demonstration.
Arrested: May 21, 1934
Sentence: One year and one day, plus a $100 fine.
Judge: Edgar S. Vaught
Convicted: Yes