Biography
Joe Neil was an IWW member. Joe Neil was incarcerated in the insane ward of the Kansas State Penitentiary (from 1922 to 1928) for violating a Kansas criminal syndicalism law prohibiting IWW membership.
The International Labor Defense holiday roster in the December 29, 1925 Daily Worker lists this prisoner, printed as Joe Niel, at Lansing Kansas. Its printed identifier is POBox2; this is a prison number or mailing designation, not a year or a custody date. 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
The Daily Worker of December 17, 1924, page 5, individually lists this prisoner among its political and class-war prisoners at Kansas State Penitentiary. This fills the blank institution using the printed roster in conjunction with the existing case biography. The publication date is an observation, not an admission or release date; no duration is inferred.
Daily Worker, December 17, 1924, original page 5, political-prisoner roster.
White describes the Austrian-born IWW member as joining in the late1910s and experiencing earlier minor-charge jails and deportations. A summer1922 Hutchinson Kansas arrest for asking a man for a quarter became a criminal-syndicalism case after union membership was discovered. The article reports release in1928 after six years in Kansas prison, including an asylum ward, and reproduces allegations of brutality. Its summer arrest wording conflicts with the inherited May date, so no exact date is replaced; cited1928 newspaper publication days are not discharge days.
White’s prison-record note identifies Neil with historical Kansas prisoner number 7950 and aliases Joe Niel, Andy McDonald, Jack Neall, Johnann Diermeyer, Peter Murphy and John Deermeyer. His note also preserves a conflict about the asylum ward: some records suggest a breakdown, while Neil claimed he simulated insanity to obtain better food. Neither account is installed as a definitive diagnosis.
Ahmed White, Under the Iron Heel (University of California Press, 2022), physical PDF pages 254, 255; printed page = physical minus 11; source193 SHA256 7c24fb0ba336fcbf379fb9720f70dcdbf754d796a50dee77b39e38e0f9bd2868.
