Biography
James W. Ford was an African-American Communist Party organizer and its vice-presidential candidate in 1932, 1936 and 1940. On July 29, 1932, during the suppression of the Bonus Army, police arrested him in Washington, D.C., with Communist organizer William Powell. Ford was crowded into a small cell with other detainees, fingerprinted, photographed and questioned by police and immigration officials. Authorities then transported him and other veterans under armed guard into Maryland. He was released at Frederick on July 30 and traveled to Baltimore. Ford continued Communist Party organizing for decades.
In a fortieth-birthday profile printed March 1, 1934, Earl Browder describes Ford as born near the Pratt City, Alabama coal mines where his father worked after migrating from the Deep South in the 1880s, and reports that his grandfather was lynched. The account connects Ford wartime army experience with his later political development, and describes his RILU and Communist International congress participation, work organizing the first international congress of Negro workers and study of the national question in the Soviet Union. The March 3 banquet was announced prospectively; the existing Ford portrait is preserved. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n052-mar-01-1934-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
The November 2, 1932 Daily Worker, page 1, reports a separate Akron, Ohio arrest and release during Ford’s election tour. It describes a sleepless night in police hands followed by his appearance in Youngstown and then Cleveland. The report establishes an overnight detention but does not provide a secure exact arrest or release date, formal charge or court disposition. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n262-NY-nov-02-1932-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
Page 3 prints his first-person statement after release. He describes six prisoners crowded into a cell five by eleven feet, fingerprinting and photographing, racist questioning by detectives and immigration officials, threatened removal to Alabama, transport at bayonet point by army truck into Maryland, transfer to a bus under Maryland State Police and his eventual release at Frederick before reaching Baltimore by train. These are his attributed contemporary descriptions of the established July 29–30, 1932 episode; they do not prove a completed deportation or another detention. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n182-NY-aug-01-1932-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
Printed page 169 reports Ford arrested after addressing worker-veterans in Washington the day following the Bonus Army attack, subjected to racist indignities and forcibly expelled from the District. This corroborates the existing July 29 detention and removal episode; it does not establish another arrest or alter the independently documented July 30 release at Frederick, Maryland. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1932/v08n09-sep-1932-LD.pdf
The official House Clerk returns for the November 4, 1930 congressional election list James W. Ford as a candidate for New Yorks21st Congressional District as a Communist. This corroborates electoral activity rather than a fresh arrest or custody endpoint. Source: https://clerk.house.gov/member_info/electionInfo/1930election.pdf#page=17
