Biography
John Kasper was an organizer of the Newark Unemployed Council who helped prepare an unemployed-workers parade in Bayonne, New Jersey. The Daily Worker of December 30, 1931, pages 1-2, reports that Bayonne police beat him after he went to the police station on Monday, December 28, to inquire about a parade permit and the detained organizer Paul Brown. Kasper was brought before a judge for a hearing; the report says the judge denounced the police conduct. A reporter subsequently interviewed Kasper at the International Labor Defense office in New York, describing injuries to his face and back and repeated vomiting. The report establishes detention and that he was outside police custody by the interview, but not his exact release day, formal charge or final disposition. No connection to the later segregationist of the same name is established.
The Daily Worker of March 5, 1931, page 2, prints the Newark TUUL secretary’s name as John Casper and reports that Judge Simondle sentenced him on March 4 to 60 days for the unemployment demonstrations of January 28 and February 7. This is an earlier Newark prosecution, separate from the December Bayonne permit detention; an exact arrest day, formal statutory charge and actual release endpoint remain unestablished. The Casper/Kasper spelling variation and Newark organizing context identify this episode, without linkage to the later segregationist namesake.
The January 2, 1932 follow-up describes Kasper’s warrantless arrest when he came to inquire about Brown and severe injuries that left him bedridden. It reports the cases against both organizers quashed after habeas proceedings. Brown’s seventy-two-hour solitary confinement and Thursday physical release are not assigned to Kasper, whose precise discharge remains unknown. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n002-NY-anniversary-ed-jan-02-1932-DW-LOC.pdf#page=6
