Biography
Josephine Winslow Johnson was a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who reported on the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union struggle. On June 5, 1936, she and artist Joe Jones attended the trial of organizer Dave Benson in Forrest City, Arkansas. After speaking with a Black sharecropper, they were arrested on suspicion of aiding the strikers and taken into an office for questioning. Officials searched their belongings and camera films. A reporter verified their identities, and they were released with a warning against discussing the union with sharecroppers. Johnson described the incident in her article The Arkansas Terror.
In her first-person New Masses article The Arkansas Terror, June 30, 1936, printed page 12 / PDF page 15, Johnson describes being arrested on suspicion after speaking with a Black witness at Forrest City on Benson’s trial day. Officials searched purses and camera films and said press cards meant nothing; a reporter verified the visitors’ identities before their release with an order not to talk to Black sharecroppers about the union. The article does not itself give an exact arrest day and is not used to reset the existing June 5 chronology. The contributors note on PDF page 36 identifies her as author of the 1934 Pulitzer Prize novel Now in November. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1936/v20n01-jun-30-1936-NM.pdf#page=15
