Biography
John T. Pace was a Detroit organizer for the Workers Ex-Servicemen’s League and a leader of its contingent within the 1932 Bonus Army. He was also the Communist Party’s congressional candidate in Michigan’s 16th District. Washington police arrested him near a White House demonstration on July 25, 1932. In later congressional testimony, Pace recalled spending about twenty to twenty-five days in jail. After returning to Michigan, he led a demonstration in Lincoln Park that won a promise of coal for unemployed families and the withdrawal of a relief cut.
Pages 1 and 3 identify Pace among seventeen Bonus Army detainees still held on deportation allegations in the July 31 report despite the paper calling him a United States citizen. It reports that ILD lawyers Schwab and Levinson obtained a habeas writ from Judge Luhring, with an August 2 hearing planned, and lists Pace for a prospective hearing on parading without a permit and disorderly conduct. A filed writ or planned hearing is not a completed release or verdict. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n182-NY-aug-01-1932-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
Labor Defender, August 1932, printed page 153 (PDF page 14): The Bonus Army Digs In reports rank-and-file leaders Pace, Eicker and surname-only Johnson arrested while marching to picket Hoover, and released after two days following veterans' pressure. It supplies no exact date for that episode. This undated release account does not override the separately dated later July 25 detention and subsequent continued custody, nor establish that all Bonus Army prisoners had been freed. The report of twenty-five unnamed marines punished for refusing action is explicitly a circulating story, not an identified roster. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1932/v08n08-aug-1932-LD.pdf
The final-page Views of the Month collage captions Pace, leader of Washington rank-and-file veterans, being arrested by Secret Service agents. This visually corroborates the existing Bonus Army detention; no exact separate arrest day or twenty-day total follows from the undated caption. His existing identified portrait is retained. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1932/v08n09-sep-1932-LD.pdf
The November 21, 1932 report places the veterans’ organizer in Detroit jail serving a sixty-three-day term for leading an election-campaign demonstration. This is the imposed term and an intermediate custody report, not proof all sixty-three days were completed. Daily Worker, November 21, 1932, original PDF page 1. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n278-NY-nov-21-1932-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
The November 21, 1932 Daily Worker prints an appeal from Pace's Detroit jail cell, where he was serving a sixty-five-day sentence for leading an election-campaign demonstration. As chairman of the Veterans National Rank and File Committee, he called for veterans to join the National Bonus March and for food, clothing and trucks to support it. The appeal corroborates his existing 1932 detention, without establishing a new admission or exact release date. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n278-NY-nov-21-1932-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
