Biography
Joe Clohessy was imprisoned at Folsom State Prison during the era of California's criminal-syndicalism prosecutions, which sent more than a hundred IWW members and labor radicals to San Quentin and Folsom on one-to-fourteen-year terms. He appears on the International Labor Defense's rosters of American class-war prisoners in Labor Defender (1926-27); like most of the rank-and-file labor prisoners of the period, little else about his case entered the historical record.
Joseph Clohessy, an IWW member from Los Angeles, received a five-year prison sentence, which he served in Folsom from July 12, 1923, until his term expired.
The International Labor Defense holiday roster in the December 29, 1925 Daily Worker lists this prisoner, printed as Joe Clohess, at Folsom California. This documents confinement at the roster’s reporting time, without establishing an admission, transfer, release, new conviction or complete duration. Existing independently sourced custody chronology remains separate. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1925/1925-ny/v02b-n297-NYE-dec-29-1925-DW-LOC.pdf#page=5
