Biography
James Wilson was a Black Philadelphia worker imprisoned for picketing the German consulate during the campaign to free Ernst Thaelmann. Judge Otto Heiligman sentenced him and Ben Gardner to a year at Holmesburg County Workhouse on August 13, 1934. The defendants fought the convictions through appeals. Wilson was confined at Holmesburg County Prison in 1935, when supporters sent him messages and organized a release celebration.
Page 2’s account of the August 13 anti-Nazi-picket sentencing reports Wilson and Gardner defending their right to demonstrate from the witness stand. The four women codefendants received six months; their names are not printed here. The paper describes police riding into the peaceful pickets and prosecutor Carrol appealing to the jury’s sympathies for police. These are attributed trial accounts within the existing one-year Holmesburg case. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n196-aug-16-1934-DW-LOC.pdf
The Philadelphia meeting notice identifies Gardner and Wilson as recently released from prison for demonstrating against fascism, with a welcome planned for October 29. This is a retrospective release report rather than merely an advance celebration, but it supplies no exact physical discharge date or completed duration. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n250-NAT-oct-18-1935-DW-Q.pdf#page=3
The article pairs Wilson with Ben Gardner in the Philadelphia German-consulate anti-Nazi case and reports Judge Otto Heiligman’s one-year sentence and the defense appeal. Four women’s six-month sentences are not assigned to him, and no exact custody endpoint is added.
