Biography
John Morgan was an organizer for the Marine Workers' League. John Morgan served a six-month term on New York's Welfare Island for his waterfront organizing, and appeared in the ILD's Labor Defender as one of the labor prisoners of 1929.
The November29,1929 New Orleans report identifies the Marine Workers League acting secretary as John S. Morgan and places his arrest with Leonard Brown at league headquarters on Tuesday, November26. Both remained jailed after police confiscated labor publications and accused the organizers of advocating destruction of the government. This supplies the arrest date for the existing New Orleans episode; the separate Welfare Island term is unchanged. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n228-NY-nov-29-1929-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
The December 2 report describes twenty-day terms and $25 fines imposed in the New Orleans Marine Workers League crackdown after the November 26, 1929 arrests. A later report records the sedition case dropped and release by December 25. The twenty-day penalty is not substituted for complete actual custody. Daily Worker, December 2, 1929, original PDF page 1. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n230-NY-dec-02-1929-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
1920s custody review: The Daily Worker of August 19, 1929, page 2, describes Marine Workers League organizer John Morgan as serving a six-month sentence after attempting to organize workers on a Standard Oil ship. Its November 16 issue, page 2, carries a November 15 New Orleans dispatch describing him as recently released from the six-month Welfare Island term and organizing in the South. Release is therefore recorded only at year precision, 1929. Neither publication day nor dispatch day is treated as the release date. Arrest and admission remain blank because the reports do not date those events; no admission is back-calculated from sentence length. No identifiable photograph was established.
Sources: Daily Worker, August 19, 1929, page 2; Daily Worker, November 16, 1929, page 2. Original pages visually inspected.
A separate New Orleans detention and completed release
The New Orleans dispatch dated December 6 in the December 7, 1929 Daily Worker identifies Marine Workers’ League organizer John S. Morgan and reports that he and three other organizers had been arrested, jailed and subsequently released through International Labor Defense activity. The accompanying Leo Stark interview refers to recent New Orleans arrests of Morgan, Brown and other League organizers. The existing contemporary November account already places the Marine Workers’ League organizer John Morgan in New Orleans after release from his Welfare Island sentence; this organizational and geographic sequence supports treating the southern incident separately, not as continued service of the New York term. The paper attributes abusive treatment to city officials, federal agents and an American Legion commander. It does not identify the physical admission, discharge or arrest day, formal charge, disposition or duration of this New Orleans detention. No interval is calculated backward from the dispatch or the former six-month sentence, and no initial is installed as an unverified alias.
Daily Worker, December 7, 1929, original pages 1, 2. Contemporary allegations are attributed to the newspaper.
A dated arrest within the separately reported New Orleans detention
The New Orleans dispatch dated November 28 reports that police seized John S. Morgan, acting secretary of the Marine Workers’ League branch, and Leonard Brown at the league headquarters on Tuesday. That relative date identifies the reported arrest as November 26, 1929, not a physical admission day. It separately names Victor Aronson and William J. Davis as arrested the preceding Monday; their arrests are not moved to Morgan’s date. The report attributes to police an accusation of advocating destruction of the U.S. government and the blotter description “dangerous and suspicious characters.” The same league role, location and chronological sequence already recorded after the Welfare Island release connect this with the southern detention described in the December 6 dispatch, not continued service of the New York six-month term. No exact jail entry, actual discharge or elapsed total is supplied here. The earlier proposed New Orleans episode retains its existing candidate identity; this evidence must not generate a second episode or alter the Welfare Island case.
Daily Worker, November 29, 1929, original pages 1. Accounts and allegations are attributed to the newspaper.
The December 25 New Orleans dispatch identifies Marine Workers League organizer John S. Morgan among four defendants released from jail, with charges dropped and bondsmen exonerated through ILD and attorney R. A. Darling. It describes his painting the union hall at 308 Chartres Street. This report concerns a New Orleans episode distinct from the existing six-month Welfare Island sentence; it supplies no exact arrest, admission or release day.
The seamen-defense article individually names Victor Aronson, William J. Davids, John Morgan and Leonard Brown in the New Orleans arrests and rearrests, and says all four faced a sedition accusation based on the November Labor Defender and union leaflets. The account supplies no individual new booking or discharge day; generic rearrest wording is not split into invented additional episodes. Independently documented December release evidence is preserved. The accompanying photograph shows seamen in a German port, not these defendants.
