Biography
Richard "Blackie" Ford was an IWW spokesman convicted of second-degree murder for the 1913 Wheatland Hop Riot near Wheatland, California — a clash between heavily armed sheriffs and 2,800 impoverished hop pickers organizing for water, sanitary conditions, and back wages on the Durst Ranch. Four people were killed in the clash, including the district attorney and two pickers. Ford was scapegoated for his role giving the workers' speech that morning. Sentenced to life; paroled from Folsom October 7, 1925, immediately rearrested on a second charge, and physically released January 24, 1926 after acquittal on that charge.
Daily Worker, June 15, 1926, page 2: J. Louis Engdahl’s editorial includes Mooney and Billings, Ford and Suhr among California labor-prisoner examples while criticizing the political establishment. This broad retrospective list is preserved as advocacy context, without replacing the individual’s better documented case outcome or inferring a fresh arrest or continued custody from the editorial alone. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n131-NY-jun-15-1926-DW-LOC.pdf
The January 25 Marysville dispatch explicitly dates Ford’s physical release after the second murder-trial acquittal to Sunday, January 24, 1926. It distinguishes that freedom from continuing parole on his earlier Folsom sentence and describes his immediate rearrest at the prison gate after parole, without assuming a freedom gap. The jury’s three days of deliberations are not detention time; Suhr was still imprisoned. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n013-NY-jan-27-1926-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
The July 24 Wheatland retrospective names Austin Lewis in Ford’s defense, E. P. McDaniel at the first trial and Busick at retrial, identifies Ray Manwell as the slain district attorney’s son, and reports seventy-seven hours of jury deliberation. Deliberation is not a custody total. Its September 11 parole and first-trial chronology conflict with contemporaneous evidence already preserved in this profile, so those dates are not substituted. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n118-NY-jul-24-1929-DW-LOC.pdf#page=6
1920s remaining-entry review: The January 1926 Labor Defender (printed page 12, PDF page 18) states that Ford was paroled from Folsom on October 7, 1925 and immediately rearrested on a second murder charge arising from the same Wheatland clash. The January 27, 1926 Daily Worker, page 1, explicitly reports his physical release on Sunday, January 24, after acquittal on that second charge; he remained on parole in the first case. The release endpoint here covers this continuous custody through the second prosecution, not the earlier parole transition. Both complete source pages were visually checked. The former 1924 release year is unsupported by these contemporary reports. The first jail-admission date remains unresolved; the existing photograph is retained.
Contemporary parole and rearrest report; Contemporary acquittal and release report
Contemporary labor and defense account, August 1925
Thurber Lewis’s report of the June 28, 1925 founding conference of International Labor Defense names Ford and Suhr among the imprisoned workers for whose unconditional release the organization called. This is contemporary evidence of the existing imprisonment and defense campaign, not a new case or a precise admission, release, or actual-served duration.
Daily Worker, June 15, 1926; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
The San Quentin overcrowding item says Ford, Suhr and Warren Billings were already serving their sentences at Folsom. This is an institutional observation by the issue date, without an individual transfer or discharge day.
