Biography
J. L. Williamson was a sixty-seven-year-old Spanish–American War veteran and American Legion charter member framed on a "petty larceny" charge — arrested carrying Ex-Servicemen's League and Anti-Imperialist League cards — and sentenced to three years on Welfare Island, New York. Held four months in the Tombs awaiting trial, he had been imprisoned since September 1928.
The November 1930 Labor Defender reproduces Norman Thomas’s August 19, 1930 reply to J. L. Williamson and quotes Williamson’s own account: Judge C. Nott sent him to Welfare Island after four months awaiting trial in the Tombs. Williamson attributed hostile remarks about his Ex-Servicemen’s League and Anti-Imperialist League cards to Nott. The judge’s abbreviated printed name is retained without expansion. The source does not establish physical release in September 1931; the inherited endpoint is not independently validated by the three-year imposed term.
Labor Defender, November 1930, original PDF page 26 (printed 233).
