Biography
John Little was a labor organizer arrested during July 1930 raids associated with the Pennsylvania anthracite strike and charged with sedition. The Daily Worker of July 8 describes police raids on labor and Communist offices in Scranton following a miners’ meeting in Dunmore. Little was a TUUL youth organizer, arrested on July2 after police raided his room, and released on July3 on $1,000 bail.
The July 26, 1930 Militant reports him with four other Scranton sedition defendants still jailed for a fall grand jury. It describes Tash’s Dunmore-speech arrest and the following raid on the union and ILD offices, with fingerprinting and ten hours before charges. This conflicts with earlier July bail releases already documented in his case. Those earlier dates are preserved, while the full custody total remains uncertain; the vague later report does not prove a rearrest or twenty years actually served. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/1930/28jul1930.pdf#page=8
The July 3 dispatch describes the July 2 Scranton sedition raid and $1,000 bail and recalls an earlier Sunday Pittston meeting arrest. Five July defendants are not all individually named in this report. The Sunday arrests of Slinger, Little and Pollack were followed by release before the July raid; those earlier detentions are distinct from the sedition rearrests. Tash and Frankfeld are not assumed to share identical arrest circumstances. Daily Worker, July 4, 1930, page 1. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1930/v07-n160-NY-jul-04-1930-DW-LOC.pdf
The July 3 report explicitly names this organizer among those arrested at or in connection with the Pittston miners’ meeting on Sunday, June 29, 1930. Pollack was detained when seeking bail for the others. Slinger, Little and Pollack were released before the July 2 raid. Precise physical release for the other named men is not supplied. This is distinct from the later Scranton sedition case. Daily Worker, July 4, 1930, page 1. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1930/v07-n160-NY-jul-04-1930-DW-LOC.pdf
The July 4 Scranton report explicitly says Little had been released in time to be rearrested the previous day, July 3, 1930, in the second raid with Peter Thanos and Lawrence Young. This adds a reported rearrest after bail within the same repression campaign; it does not silently turn the existing July 2–3 episode into continuous detention or invent a new statutory prosecution. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1930/v07-n161-NY-jul-05-1930-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
A proposed federal prosecution, not a completed federal disposition
The July 10 Scranton dispatch names Sylvan Pollock, John and Joseph Lash, Dan Slinger and John Little in a proposed effort to turn their prosecution into a federal case. The report says district attorney J. J. Owens was consulting assistant U.S. district attorney A. A. Vosberg (also printed Vosburg) and a Justice Department agent identified only as Hickey. These are reported consultations, not proof of a federal indictment, conviction, sentence or the assignment of a formal prosecutor in an executed proceeding. Its “last Friday” arrest wording conflicts with the more specific July 2 arrests and July 3 or July 6 bail departures preserved from the July 8 issue. No new arrest date, readmission, continuous detention or numerical duration is inferred. John Little is matched through the existing Scranton organizing and co-defendant context; the printed Pollock variant is already cross-referenced in Pollack’s biography and is not newly installed as an alias.
Daily Worker, July 11, 1930, original pages 3. Accounts and allegations are attributed to the newspaper.
