Biography
Hugh Davis, identified as being from Washington, was a youth already confined at Cheltenham Reformatory in Maryland when he and three other inmates were taken to Upper Marlboro and held incommunicado on an attempted-rape allegation. Sadie van Veen’s February 15, 1936 Daily Worker article described the accusation as a racial frame-up and reported that intervention by Thurgood Marshall and an Afro-American reporter secured their return to Cheltenham.
Hugh Davis, identified as being from Washington, was a youth already confined at Cheltenham Reformatory in Maryland when he and three other inmates were taken to Upper Marlboro and held incommunicado on an attempted-rape allegation. Sadie van Veen’s February 15, 1936 Daily Worker article described the accusation as a racial frame-up and reported that intervention by Thurgood Marshall and an Afro-American reporter secured their return to Cheltenham.
The article cites an Afro-American report dating the arrests January 10, and calls the episode last month, establishing January 10, 1936 in the issue’s chronology. It reports that the youths were working elsewhere when the alleged attack occurred. Those claims remain attributed to the contemporary report. Their return to Cheltenham was continued institutional confinement, not freedom from custody. The original admission grounds and dates, length of the Upper Marlboro hold, return day, ultimate discharge and full duration are not established. No individual birth year is inferred from the group age range.
Sadie van Veen, Cheltenham: House of Terror, Daily Worker, February 15, 1936, page 7.
