Biography
Homer Welch was an organizer for the United Textile Workers in the Southern textile industry. National Guard troops captured him outside Newnan Cotton Mills in Georgia on September 17, 1934 during the general textile strike. In Alabama, he organized the 1936 strike at Samoset Mills in Talladega. After a July 22 confrontation in which Deputy Sheriff John J. Bryant was killed, Welch was charged with murder. A jury convicted him of manslaughter in November 1936, and Judge Carr sentenced him to ten years. Welch appealed and, after leaving prison, returned to union organizing.
The Daily Worker of July30,1936 reports that Welch surrendered to Birmingham police on July27 after the Talladega killing. He denied killing anyone and said he had sought to surrender where he would be safe from employer-organized lynch mobs.
Page 12 identifies him as Homer L. Welch, elected president of the Alabama Federation of Textile Workers at its Talladega conference in the same courtroom where he had received a ten-year sentence. He was then free on appeal bond and continuing union organizing. This establishes his bail status by publication without assigning an exact physical release day. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/southernworker/v5n16-jul-00-1937-sw.pdf
The January 1937 Southern Worker recounts his ten-year sentence in the Talladega mill case and says defense counsel had filed an appeal. Its allegation that the fatal bullet caliber differed from Thornton’s pistol is attributed to the labor press, not an independently adjudicated finding. No exact physical release day is established. PDF8–9. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/southernworker/v5n11-jan-00-1937-sw.pdf
The March 1937 Southern Worker reports Welch attending the textile organizers conference just a week after leaving prison, while his appeal was pending. Its ten-year term is the imposed sentence, not completed imprisonment. The relative week does not establish a precise physical release day. PDF3. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/southernworker/v5n12-mar-00-1937-sw.pdf
The July 23 Talladega dispatch explicitly says Welch had not yet been apprehended, although murder warrants named him and J. A. Gann, Eugene Thornton, Red Morrison and Fred Hurst after the Samoset picket-line confrontation. Only the latter four were already in county jail. This is a warrant-stage report preceding his separately documented July 27 arrest; no earlier custody is inferred.
