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Irving Schwartz

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

Irving Schwartz joined a delegation of unemployed workers seeking to present demands at the American Federation of Labor furriers’ convention at Philadelphia’s Labor Institute. Convention officials forcibly ejected Schwartz, Sol Wollin, Anna Bogansky and Eli Sitkin, and police immediately arrested them on May 16, 1932. All four were charged with inciting a riot and held on $1,500 bail each.

Labor Defender, July 1932, records the May 16 arrest of the unemployed delegation at the AFL furriers’ convention in Philadelphia’s Labor Institute. It says officials forcibly ejected the delegation and police then arrested its four members for inciting riot, with $1,500 bail each. This corroborates the existing episode without a new case, an invented release or an assumed continuous stay through July. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1932/v08n07-jul-1932-LD.pdf#page=16

The May 17, 1932 Philadelphia report published May 18 explicitly says the four fur-convention defendants had just been released on $1,500 bail each. It prints Zipkin, Wollen, Schwartz and Bogdansky, probable variants of the already recorded May 16 cohort Sitkin, Wollin, Schwartz and Bogansky. Unlike the July Labor Defender account describing an unemployed delegation, this report calls them employed fur workers. Both the spelling and employment discrepancy are retained. Liberty by this report does not establish an exact physical discharge day or a measured continuous interval. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n118-NY-may-18-1932-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2

Case

Charges: Inciting a riot after presenting unemployed-workers’ demands at the AFL furriers’ convention in Philadelphia.
Arrested: May 16, 1932
Incarcerated: May 16, 1932
Sentence: Held under $1,500 bail following the May 16, 1932 Philadelphia furriers-convention arrest; explicitly reported just released in the May 17 dispatch. Exact physical discharge day and total custody duration unknown.