Biography
H. Austin Simons was a writer and conscientious objector imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth, where he was a leader of the January 1919 prisoners' work strike — urging nonviolence as the protest, which began with the objectors, grew to some 2,300 inmates demanding sentence reviews and better conditions.
In The U.S. Revolutionary Training Institute, Simons described clandestine organizing at Fort Leavenworth, where fellow prisoners addressed him as sixty-one. He recalled speaking from a bench while other inmates concealed his uniform numbers and a lookout warned of approaching guards. He taught English composition in the Wire City night school and later recalled a quiet farewell gathering before his own release. The account appeared in the September 1919 Liberator, pages 42–44. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/culture/pubs/liberator/1919/09/v2n09-w19-sep-1919-liberator.pdf#page=42
The Revolutionary Age of August 9, 1919 prints a letter received by the National Left Wing Conference on June 21, 1919 from political prisoners confined in the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. It lists H. Austin Simons among political prisoners who explicitly said they were not Socialist Party members, endorsing the letter's support for the Left Wing and its political aims. June 21 is the conference's receipt date, not an admission or release date; no individual charge or measured custody total is supplied.
Carl Haessler's January 1927 Labor Defender account identifies H. Austin Simons as a strike leader in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth. The accompanying caption individually identifies the portrait drawing reproduced here; the article credits its drawings to Maurice Becker. This is an original historical illustration, not a photograph. The article's opening says January 1918, while its narrative explicitly begins the unrest at Christmas 1918 and proceeds into the following January. That internal discrepancy is preserved rather than used to change custody dates. The institution identifies the military disciplinary barracks, not the separate federal penitentiary.
In The U.S. Revolutionary Training Institute, Simons described clandestine organizing at Fort Leavenworth, where fellow prisoners addressed him as sixty-one. He recalled speaking from a bench while other inmates concealed his uniform numbers and a lookout warned of approaching guards. He taught English composition in the Wire City night school and later recalled a quiet farewell gathering before his own release. The account appeared in the September 1919 Liberator, pages 42–44.
