Biography
John Catchings worked at Republic Steel's Thomas furnace in Birmingham, Alabama, and lived with his wife and six children in the company's Thomas Quarters. He helped build Local 137 of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers and took part in the 1934 strike. Arrested in September 1934 on a charge of dynamiting strikebreaker Dave Stewart's home, he was convicted in 1936 and sentenced to 526 days at hard labor. Catchings denied involvement and produced seven witnesses who placed him at the union hall. He began serving the sentence on March 3, 1937. A defense committee chaired by Reverend Jack Edgar, with Joseph S. Gelders as secretary, campaigned for his freedom.
A December 17 Birmingham dispatch in the Daily Worker of December 18, 1934, page 3, named John Catchings, George Porter, Lee Carter, William O'Neal Cotton and Melvin Watson as defendants in strike-related bombing prosecutions whose trial was scheduled for January 21. It separately listed Henry Manuel for a January 7 trial. These were prospective trial dates; the report does not establish an additional arrest, actual trial outcome or new confinement period for Catchings. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n301-Nat-dec-18-DW-LOC.pdf
Page 6 distinguishes an earlier 1934 picket-line seizure from the later September bombing arrest: police put Catchings in a patrol wagon, but about one hundred pickets crowded around and insisted on accompanying him, and police let him go. Its trial account says witness Will Cotton changed his police-investigation account, while seven witnesses placed Catchings at a union hall about a mile and a half from the bombing. The article identifies Mrs. Catchings as defense-committee treasurer. Its baby photograph is daughter Helen Louise, not John. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/southernworker/v5n16-jul-00-1937-sw.pdf
Earlier in the 1934 Republic Steel strike, police seized John Catchings from the picket line and placed him in a patrol wagon. About one hundred pickets crowded around and insisted on going too; police then released him. This was a completed brief custody episode, distinct from the later September bombing arrest; no exact day or measured duration is supplied. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/southernworker/v5n16-jul-00-1937-sw.pdf#page=6
Sasha Small’s Christmas relief appeal describes Catchings as a Birmingham Republic Steel union organizer, beaten, blacklisted and imprisoned under a 526-day sentence. His wife cared for six children; John Jr. knew a union ballad about his father. The ILD supplied necessities and sought Christmas relief. This is contemporary family and defense context, without a new custody endpoint or proof that the full imposed term had been served.
