Biography
Karl Lockner was a Communist organizer of unemployed workers in Chicago and the Communist candidate for mayor in 1935. A Daily Worker profile dated February 2, 1935, page 3, described him as twenty-six years old and a Wisconsin native who had studied at a university and worked as a chemical engineer. According to the profile, he became active in the Young Communist League after reading Lenin, led a 1932 hunger march against a Chicago relief cut and a 1933 march to Springfield for unemployment insurance, and had been arrested more than twenty times since February 1930. The newspaper connects the arrests with relief and rent demonstrations, unemployment insurance and CWA jobs, antiwar activity, distributing leaflets and posters, support for teachers seeking back pay and protests against troops being used against striking miners. It does not identify exact individual arrest dates, charges, sentences or custody durations. The reported age does not establish an exact birth date.
Daily Worker, September 8, 1934: Page 3 reports that the Communist candidate for congressman-at-large had resumed his speaking tour after a kidnapping and severe beating by coal-company thugs at Staunton (printed “Stauton”), Illinois, roughly two weeks earlier. It announces a Galesburg meeting. The relative dating does not establish an exact day or the length of the private confinement. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n216-sep-08-1934-DW-LOC.pdf
The August 29, 1934 Daily Worker dates the Staunton attack to the preceding Friday, August 24. It reports that thugs abducted him after his speech, severely injured his nose, drove him away and dumped him on a road. Friends found him and sheltered him in a worker’s home. This provides a firmer day for the already recorded kidnapping, rather than a new arrest or continuing prison term. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n207-aug-29-1934-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
Page 1’s May 15 Chicago dispatch reports police attacking a 7,000-person united-front relief demonstration and arresting and beating Lockner, state chairman of the Unemployment Councils. Tom McKenna and others were arrested. The meeting had moved to Grant Park after Congress Plaza was refused. No charge, disposition or measured detention is supplied. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n117-NAT-may-16-1935-DW-Q.pdf
Contemporary original newspaper source; individual page evidence retained in review audit 256. Exact individual custody dates and duration are not inferred from relative dates or collective claims.
Daily Worker, September 8, 1934; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Daily Worker, May 16, 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
