Biography
Jane Newton was the white wife of Black labor and civil-rights organizer Herbert Newton in Chicago. The Daily Worker of December 18, 1934, pages 1 and 6, reports that police arrested her during a Red Squad raid on their apartment at 615 Oakwood Boulevard. Judge Green gave her a suspended sentence and six months of probation conditional on leaving the apartment. When she returned to court with International Labor Defense attorneys Ben Myers and Hart E. Baker to seek to vacate the sentence, she was arrested for alleged violation of probation and committed to the Psychopathic Hospital. The paper attributes the forced psychiatric confinement to racial hostility toward her interracial marriage. The ILD sought habeas corpus. The report does not establish exact custody endpoints, a medical finding, or eventual disposition.
Daily Worker, January 21, 1935: Page 2’s Chicago January 20 dispatch identifies her as Jane Emery Newton and reports that she was freed the previous morning, January 19: Judge Green’s disorderly charges were dismissed, the $200 fine revoked and probation lifted. It attributes the prosecution to opposition to her interracial marriage and resistance to eviction at 615 Oakwood Boulevard. This supplies the reported release and disposition missing from the December account; it does not establish an uninterrupted hospitalization or total time held. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n018-Nat-jan-21-1935-DW-LOC.pdf
Sources
Daily Worker, January 21, 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
The January 4 Chicago dispatch published January 5 identifies Jane Emery Newton as Herbert Newton's wife and reports that she had already been freed after the effort to declare her insane over their interracial marriage. It says court-ordered psychiatric examination found her sane. Her first-person account on page 2 likewise describes being sent to the Psychopathic Hospital before a hearing and later being declared sane. This earlier hospital-related freedom is distinct from the later January 19 dismissal of charges, revocation of the fine and lifting of probation already recorded here. The reports do not provide the hospital admission or physical discharge day, prove uninterrupted hospitalization until January 19, or establish a complete custody total.
