Biography
Lee Hung was a defendant in the Sacramento criminal-syndicalism prosecution arising from the organizing campaigns of the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union. The prosecution followed the California agricultural strikes of 1933 and the arrests of union organizers and supporters in 1934. Lee Hung was acquitted on April 1, 1935, when the jury returned its verdicts. Eight other defendants were convicted; their convictions were reversed on appeal in September 1937.
Daily Worker, August 23, 1934, page 1: The Sacramento dispatch individually lists this defendant among seventeen facing six criminal-syndicalism counts. It describes the Sacramento prisoners collectively as crowded fourteen to a cell, with no beds or blankets for two weeks and a hole in the floor for a toilet. The stated six-to-eighty-four-year range was potential exposure if convicted, not an imposed sentence. The account’s unnamed Chinese detainee is not identified with any named defendant.
A Sacramento defense statement dated February 27, 1935, printed in the Daily Worker on March 5, included this defendant among fourteen signers. The statement defended the International Labor Defense and its conduct of the trial and bail campaign against factional criticism. It also named Luther Mincy and John Fisher as acquitted about a week before the statement. Its allegations about other defendants’ cooperation with police are partisan claims, not independently established facts. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n055-NAT-mar-05-1935-DW-Q.pdf#page=3
Footnote 7 of Solow’s August 1935 Sacramento defense pamphlet says Lee Hung had never belonged to the Communist Party and that the prosecution failed to prove membership after he denied it. This specifically counters the membership allegation within the existing prosecution; it does not identify Hung with the unnamed Chinese detainee in other reporting or establish a new custody date. Source: https://dai.mun.ca/PDFs/radical/UnionSmashinginSacramento.pdf#page=29
The complete Sacramento roster on PDF pages 17–18 individually names this defendant among seventeen indicted for criminal syndicalism during the 1934 strike crackdown. Printed variants include Lorent Norman, W. H. Huffine and Harry J. Collentz. The threatened six-to-eighty-four-year range is exposure, not an imposed sentence or actual service. This corroborates the existing Sacramento prosecution; no new arrest, personal prison admission, release day or verdict is inferred from the roster.
The biography describes a Chinese former restaurant cook, the 1931 San Francisco Chinese Unemployed Council, anti-Chiang activism, and 1933 Sacramento ILD organizing. It describes making useful items and music for fellow prisoners. The caption identifies him among the defendants; no new custody endpoint supplied.
