Biography
Sam Herman was a Communist Party organizer in Racine, Wisconsin during the labor and unemployment protests surrounding the Horlick malted-milk strike. Vigilantes kidnapped and beat him in December 1934. After escaping from their automobile, he sought warrants against his attackers. Police instead arrested him for criminal libel because he had accused Police Chief Grover Lutter of involvement. The International Labor Defense organized his defense amid further threats against its attorney, George Gulbankian.
Pages 1–2 date the daylight Racine kidnapping to December 13, 1934. They report that arrested suspect Nick Bins described threats to kill Herman, beatings, intimidation of his bondsman, and a car allegedly driven by a Justice Department agent from Chicago. The report attributes the plot to business and American Legion circles and describes investigators obtaining Bins’s admissions. These are contemporary allegations, not judicial findings; Bins is the alleged perpetrator, not another political-prisoner profile. No exact libel-arrest or release date is inferred from the kidnapping day. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n014-not-15-Nat-jan-16-1935-DW-LOC.pdf
Daily Worker, January 4, 1935, page 1: A January 3 Racine dispatch announces his Municipal Court trial for the following Monday, January 7. It identifies the accusation as criminal libel after Herman accused Police Chief Grover C. Lutter of complicity in the December vigilante kidnapping from which Herman escaped by jumping from a moving car. The attempted kidnapping of defense attorney George Gulbankian is described as an attempt, without proof he was actually seized. The announced trial is prospective, not a completed judgment. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n004-Nat-jan-04-1935-DW-LOC.pdf
