Leah Young

Leah Young was an Atlanta textile worker and the sister of fellow striker Annie Mae Leathers. Born and raised in Georgia, she began working at eight and was working twelve-hour days in a cotton mill by eleven. Police arrested the sisters on the Exposition Cotton Mill picket line in September 1934. They were held at Fulton Tower Prison under $5,000 bail each, accused of circulating insurrectionary literature under the statute used against Angelo Herndon. International Labor Defense attorney John Geer represented them at a bail-reduction hearing; attorney Louis Tatham also worked on their defense. Young described eviction from mill housing and the loss of her furniture while supporting her children and unemployed husband. Both sisters were out on bond by June 1936, with the charges still pending.

Daily Worker, September 8, 1934: Page 2 reports that she and Anna May Leathers (the Annie Mae Leathers of the existing record) had been released on habeas corpus after their arrests for picket-line strike literature, with a hearing still scheduled for the following day. This establishes an intermediate release by the September 7 dispatch; it does not mean the charges were dismissed or that no later detention occurred, and no exact release day is assigned. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n216-sep-08-1934-DW-LOC.pdf

A June 2 Atlanta dispatch in the June 3, 1936 Daily Worker names Young among prisoners still jailed after the previous Thursday’s Violet Street meeting raid, establishing May 28 as the arrest day. Officials demanded $5,000 bond each. The article distinguishes this raid from her earlier insurrection case while on bond. Its mention of her sister Annie Mae Leathers concerns their earlier 1934 strike arrest and does not establish that Leathers was among the May 28 prisoners. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1936/v13-n133-NY-jun-03-1936-DW-Q.pdf#page=2

The Daily Worker, November 15, 1934, page 2, “Leathers and Young Freed in $1,000 Bail,” in an Atlanta November 13 dispatch, reports that Annie Mae Leathers and Leah Young had actually been freed under $1,000 bail each posted by the International Labor Defense in their textile-strike insurrection prosecution. This places a documented bond release by November 13, 1934, earlier than the June 1936 account already cited. The report’s twenty-year term is explicitly a possible penalty if convicted, not an imposed sentence or actual service; the exact physical release day and final outcome remain unknown. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n273-NY-nov-15-1934-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2

The same November 15 issue, page 6, Ann Barton’s “The Greatest Moment in Her Life,” reprints a Southern Worker account of the sisters’ Atlanta hearing. It says both women rejected offers of release in exchange for betraying fellow workers, and that Leathers was beaten for refusing to abandon her Black ILD attorney, named John Greer in this report. It describes Leah Young addressing a courtroom of Black and white workers for two and a half hours about workers’ solidarity. This is an attributed account of coercion and defense testimony during the existing case, not proof of another arrest, a new sentence or an additional measured custody period. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n273-NY-nov-15-1934-DW-LOC.pdf#page=6

Page 2 prints the September 27 labor/ILD delegation’s demand to Frances Perkins for release of the Atlanta textile pickets, described as Anna Mae and Leah Young, held under the slave insurrection statute used against Herndon. The sister/picketing/Atlanta context connects the Anna Mae reference to Annie Mae Leathers; it is not used to create another Young. This is an advocacy demand, not an exact rearrest or release endpoint, and does not erase earlier habeas release or later bond evidence. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n233-sep-28-1934-DW-LOC.pdf

Leah Young’s first-person account describes the sisters’ September 1934 Exposition Mill picket arrests, $5,000 bail at Fulton Tower and John Geer’s defense. Young says she had not completed first grade and earned twenty-five cents a day as an eleven-year-old mill worker. Her unnamed husband’s twelve-month chain-gang penalty was suspended on probation and is not recorded as twelve months served by him or either sister. Labor Defender, December 1935, original PDF page 11. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1935/v11n12-dec-1935-orig-LD.pdf#page=11