Biography
Sam Jones was a Communist organizer of unemployed workers in Los Angeles. A November 19, 1934 report described him serving a 150-day sentence in Lincoln Heights Jail for an alleged traffic-law infraction. The paper reported that he had been put in solitary confinement after protesting the use of prisoners on a SERA work assignment.
The July 9 Western Worker identifies Jones as a Black county Relief Workers Protective Union organizer active in unemployed struggles for seven years and says he was then serving150 days. The trial report attributes that sentence to an allegation of stealing electricity. The current-custody statement supports imprisonment, without an exact admission or discharge day or complete measured duration. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/westernworker/1934/v3-n27-31-jul-1934.pdf#page=5
Sources and evidence limits
Full legal name, exact custody endpoints, time actually served and reconciliation of the separate earlier accusations remain unverified.
Historical claims are attributed to the contemporary newspaper. No present-day custody status, demographic classification or precise date is inferred.
The April 5 Los Angeles dispatch reports PWUU leader Sam Jones arrested the previous day after a relief-grievance delegation sought its scheduled meeting with LACRA director Pilling. Complainant Frank Finnen, described as both a relief official and police officer, alleged disturbing the peace and battery after Jones fell during the confrontation. Lieutenant Wellpott arrested him and police questioned him for two hours about fires at a relief office and his home, where his daughter had died. The paper reports release April 5 on $500 bail set by Municipal Judge Harold B. Landreth, with Grover Johnson/ILD defending and an April 8 hearing scheduled. These allegations are attributed to the report; the hearing is prospective and this April 1936 episode is distinct from the existing November 1934 traffic-law imprisonment.
The page 3 campaign biography reports Jones born March 15, 1898, in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, educated through eighth grade, active in the 1932 hunger march, 1933–34 milk strike, TUUL, relief struggles and early-1936 WPA strikes at Hooper Avenue and La Brea. It names wife Arline (married 1918) and son Leslie, fourteen, and recalls his 1934 campaign while jailed. It attributes his elder daughter’s fatal kerosene cooking accident to the family’s loss of utilities and denied relief; this is not a death in custody. His 1936 supervisorial candidacy and civil-rights platform add biography without another arrest or a new measured prison term.
The November 19 dispatch reports solitary on bread and water at Lincoln Heights Jail, a 150-day sentence for a traffic-law infraction, and loss of good-time credits. December 2 was a projected endpoint, not verified release. Solitary duration and complete actual custody remain unknown.
The captioned Sam Jones portrait accompanies a report of his candidacy in Los Angeles County’s Second Supervisorial District and identifies him as a leader of the Public Works and Unemployed Union. The profile portrait is extracted directly from that newspaper photograph.
