Biography
Reginald Leftwich was a Black farmworker held on a murder charge in the Lynchburg area of Virginia in 1933. He was accused of killing his employer, A. B. Coate, and wounding Coate's wife. Police arrested him at his father's home. The International Labor Defense challenged the prosecution, alleging that officers had coerced a confession and that Coate had kept him in peonage, with an old chicken house as his sleeping quarters. The defense campaign sought a change of venue to Richmond.
