Biography
John Hilty was a Milwaukee Communist activist sentenced to three months' confinement following the March 6, 1930 unemployment demonstration. He was listed among prisoners at the Milwaukee House of Correction that September. Hilty also joined the Communist Party's Wisconsin election tour. Police arrested him, Donald Burke, Ed Nehmer and Ted Witt at a September meeting in Sheboygan, then released them after protests from the audience. In 1931 he helped distribute the Daily Worker in Milwaukee.
The September 29,1930 Daily Worker, page 3, specifies that the Sheboygan election-tour arrest occurred at its Thursday-night opening meeting, September 25. It names Donald Burke, Ed Nehmer and YCL member Ted Witt with Hilty; police invoked a permit requirement. The four were released after audience protests. No exact release day or full duration is stated. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1930/v07-n234-NY-sep-29-1930-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
The March 15, 1930 New Leader, page 4, reproduces a Milwaukee Leader account naming Hilty among people injured during the unemployment demonstration who disclaimed Communist membership. That is an attributed contemporary self-description, not a reason to erase his separately documented Communist election work. The article reports five unnamed people held for inciting riot and a prosecutor seeking a maximum year; it does not individually identify those five with the injured list or establish a one-year sentence for Hilty. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-leader/1930/v10n06-mar-15-1930-NL.pdf#page=4
The September 8, 1930 Laisve, page 5, reproduces an International Labor Defense political-prisoner directory. Its row prints J. Hilty, a term of 3 months, the year 1930 in the sentencing-year column, and confinement or correspondence location Station F, Box G, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This is an attributed historical directory entry; printed years and nominal terms are not exact intake dates or measured time served, and mailing boxes do not independently identify a prison. The directory contains stale or conflicting chronology, so this row does not override independently established conviction, death or release facts. Source: https://www.spauda2.org/laisve/archive/1930/1930-09-08-LAISVE.pdf#page=5
A reported completed three months and a separate brief arrest
In Donald Burke’s first-person Wisconsin tour account, the author identifies John Hilty as having served three months in the Milwaukee House of Correction for the March 6 demonstration. That is an explicit reported completed period, unlike the sentence-only wording in the saved case; it is not converted to ninety days or used to calculate physical endpoints. Burke separately names Hilty, Ed Nehmer, Ted Witt and himself as arrested at a Sheboygan campaign meeting, and says all were released after a lecture. The tour account supplies no individual calendar day or duration for that second episode, which is already represented separately in the saved case roster.
Daily Worker, October 30, 1930, original page 4. Contemporary descriptions and allegations are attributed to the newspaper.
