Biography
Kate Koppa was a Chicago garment-strike picket associated with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. The authorities imprisoned this union activist in 1926 for defying the anti-picketing injunction during the 1924 strike.
Daily Worker, June 15, 1926, page 1: The front-page report names this picket among those beginning terms at Cook County Jail under Judge Denis E. Sullivan for violating the injunction during the 1924 garment strike. Individual listed sentence: 20 days; no individual fine specified. About four hundred fellow union members accompanied the defendants and red carnations were handed out. The article’s relative “today” does not establish an exact physical admission day. This is the already recorded 1926 imprisonment; later release evidence and any conflicting duration reports remain in the existing case. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n131-NY-jun-15-1926-DW-LOC.pdf
The June 19, 1926 Chicago garment-prisoner account adds personal and prison-life detail. Printed as Kate Kappa in the same Chicago garment-strike cohort, she is described as leaving two children aged five and eight. This issue gives a ten-day nominal term, differing from the twenty days in the June 15 report; the discrepancy is retained without replacing an actual-service counter. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n135-NY-jun-19-1926-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
The June 25, 1926 report includes her among thirteen freed garment workers who offered to spend three additional days in jail so that Eleanor Sadlowski and Victoria Cieslakiewicz could serve less of their longer sentences. The warden refused. The offer therefore supplies solidarity history, not three additional actual days, a reduced term or another case. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n140-NY-jun-25-1926-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2
