Biography
Pettis Perry was the highest-ranking Black member of the Communist Party USA at the time of his Smith Act prosecution and one of the partys most influential theorists on Black liberation. Born to sharecroppers in Alabama in 1897, he came to Communist politics through his work with the International Labor Defense in the Scottsboro Boys defense campaign and rose through the partys ranks during the 1930s and 1940s. By the time of his 1951 indictment in the Foley Square Second String he was a member of the partys Secretariat and the head of its National Negro Commission.
Convicted in early 1953 alongside Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the rest of the second string, he was sentenced to three years in federal prison. He served his time at the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta, where the conditions in the segregated Black wing severely damaged his health. After his release he traveled to the Soviet Union for medical treatment and died there in 1965.
Separate 1934 Sacramento speaking case
Contemporary November 1934 reports describe an earlier Sacramento speaking-without-a-permit prosecution, distinct from Perry’s later Smith Act case. The November 26 issue, in a Sacramento November 19 dispatch, reports a 30-day sentence and that he was out on a $100 appeal bond. The arrest day remains conflicting: an October 29 report says the previous day, while a prison-statement footnote explicitly identifies Saturday night October 27. No exact admission/release or served 30-day duration is entered; this earlier episode is preserved separately for reconciliation.
Western Worker, November1934 issues, original PDF pages 1,5,6,11,17
A Los Angeles dispatch dated June 3 says Perry returned from Sacramento the previous day after serving thirty days in the city jail for speaking without a permit in the Plaza during the 1934 campaign. This is explicit evidence of a completed thirty-day term, distinct from his later Smith Act imprisonment. The date of his return to Los Angeles does not by itself establish the exact physical jail-discharge day. His descriptions of beatings of other inmates are attributed eyewitness allegations; their ordinary criminal accusations are not treated as political cases.
Pettis Perry's signed autobiography in the October 26, 1934 Daily Worker, page 7, describes his tenant-farmer childhood in Marion, Alabama, wartime work at Hampton Roads, refusal to scab on the 1922 railroad strike in San Bernardino, seasonal Imperial Valley labor from 1924-1930, and subsequent Scottsboro defense, Unemployed Council, League of Struggle for Negro Rights and ILD leadership. He identifies his birthday as January 4, 1897. The early chain-gang brutality narrative concerns other prisoners and does not establish an additional imprisonment of Perry.
The bundle follows the late-October Sacramento Plaza speech arrest with Edward Kinz and Thomas Massey, initially under $500 cash bail. Perry’s letter on PDF page 11 dates arrest to October 27; the October 29 dispatch says yesterday. PDF page 17 prints a November 19 dispatch reporting thirty days and a $100 fine, with Perry out on $100 appeal bond. This is an imposed sentence and bail interruption, not thirty continuous days actually served in 1934; later 1936 service evidence is retained.
