Biography
Judson Simpson was a Black sharecropper and Share Croppers' Union member wounded and arrested in the 19 December 1932 Reeltown, Alabama shootout, one of the survivors tried at Dadeville before Judge W. B. Bowling in 1933 and sentenced to 10 to 12 years for "assault with intent to murder." (Ned Cobb was later the subject of Theodore Rosengarten's oral history "All God's Dangers.") On 19 December 1932 a sheriff's posse attacked members of the Communist-led Share Croppers' Union near Reeltown in Tallapoosa County, Alabama, when they resisted the seizure of a member's livestock for debt. Several croppers were shot; the survivors were charged with "assault with intent to murder" and held for the grand jury at the Dadeville jail under $750 bail. The case, following the 1931 Camp Hill affair, became a major ILD Southern defense.
A contemporary Daily Worker report dated December22,1932,page1, citing Alabama dispatches of December21, said Simpson had been shot and almost killed but was being hidden by white croppers. This conflicts with the December19 arrest date in the existing account; the report does not resolve when he entered custody, so that conflicting chronology remains explicitly unverified.
The Daily Worker of December 23, 1932, page 1, carries a December 22 Birmingham newsflash saying Judson Simpson was severely wounded in jail and the sheriff refused medical aid. An earlier column in the same issue erroneously includes him among the dead; the later bulletin establishes that the issue itself contains conflicting reports. This updates the preceding December 21 report that he was in hiding, while leaving the exact arrest day unresolved.
The January 19, 1933 Dadeville dispatch reports a preliminary hearing the preceding day before Judge Oliver: five Reeltown defendants were held for the grand jury under $750 bail each. Cobb was accused of shooting Clifford Elder and the others of accessory involvement. The defense named Frank B. Irwin and Irving Schwab. This preliminary judge is not substituted for the later trial judge, and the collective account supplies no individual jail intake or discharge. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1933/v010-n017-NY-jan-20-1933-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
The May 2, 1933 Daily Worker reports that the five Reeltown defendants were then confined in the Alabama state penitentiary under long sentences after the Dadeville trial. The defense account describes Cobb shot three times in the back and Simpson wounded at home, his wife struck with a pistol butt, and corroboration by niece Susie Mae Cotton. It identifies Simpson as Cliff James’s brother-in-law and disputes his presence at the cabin. No exact transfer day or complete actual duration is supplied. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1933/v010-n105-NY-scct-one-may-02-1933-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
The January 18, 1933 Dadeville bulletin places this defendant among five held for the grand jury on assault-to-murder charges and sets bail at $750 each (verified on the native page; OCR misreads $150). It says Black spectators were barred while 300 sympathetic white sharecroppers attended and names defense attorneys Schwab and Irwin. Bail being set is not proof of posting or release. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1933/v09n02-feb-1933-lab-def.pdf#page=5
The original PDF’s second page, headed July 29, 1933, reports transfer of these sharecroppers to Speigner prison. The other pages are headed July 31. Its description of a previous prison shooting is institutional context and does not establish that these three were individually shot. The transfer is not a new arrest. Daily Worker, July 31, 1933 (PDF page 2: July 29), original PDF page 2. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1933/v10-n182-NY-jul-31-1933-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2
Labor Defender, March 1935, PDF page 22: Viola Cobb names him with Ned Cobb and Clinton Moss as receiving five-dollar Christmas prisoner-relief money orders, which she delivered. This is support in the existing case, not a new detention or measured service. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1935/v11n03-mar-1935-orig-LD.pdf#page=22
Goldstein’s Dadeville trial account identifies Mrs. Judson Simpson as a defense witness who openly challenged the prosecutor’s assertions. The collective five-to-fifteen-year sentence range is not substituted for his individually established penalty. Page15. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1933/v09n07-jul-1933-lab-def.pdf
The Tallapoosa report gives Simpson ten to twelve years, with five of nineteen indicted sharecroppers tried before Judge William B. Bowling. Earlier habeas releases are mentioned; the nominal sentence is not actual time served.
The January 9 Birmingham dispatch individually names him among five sharecroppers still jailed after the December 19 Reeltown confrontation. ILD attorney Frank B. Irwin refused the prosecutor’s request to waive preliminary hearings and insisted on the scheduled Wednesday hearing. Other unnamed arrestees had been freed; that collective release is explicitly not assigned to these five. No new sentence or custody endpoint is established.
