Biography
Solomon Nitzberg was forced from his house after vigilantes answered a shotgun blast with tear gas that overcame his wife and children; the paper identifies him as a militant member of a small-chicken-farmers organization near Petaluma during the Sonoma County anti-labor vigilante raids on Wednesday night, August 21, 1935, according to the August 23 Santa Rosa dispatch. The report names five captives and says two were beaten, shaved, tarred and feathered, but does not identify which two; that individual treatment is not indiscriminately assigned. The raiders threatened the other captives with similar treatment unless they left the county and claimed to be driving Communists out while workers organized for decent orchard and hop-field wages. The sheriff and district attorney took no preventive action, according to the paper. This was extrajudicial political captivity, not a judicial conviction; exact escape or release and total duration are unknown. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n203-NAT-aug-24-1935-DW-Q.pdf#page=3
A Sacramento dispatch dated April 14 in the April 15, 1936 Daily Worker identifies Sol Nitzberg and Jack Green as the men tarred and feathered by vigilantes in the Santa Rosa anti-labor attack. This later report identifies individual treatment that the earlier report of five captives did not allocate. It also describes the continuing state investigation and American Civil Liberties Union damages actions against Fred Cairns. The newspaper reports that Judge Roche struck a criminal-syndicalism allegation from Cairns's answer in the civil action. These are attributed accounts of the attack and later proceedings, without a newly established attack day, formal prison admission, release or complete custody duration.
The caption individually identifies Jack Green with his family, Green and Solomon Nitzburg after tarring and feathering, and C. Meyer and George Ford after beatings by Sonoma County vigilantes. The accompanying account dates the seizure of five labor leaders to August 21. This corroborates the existing extrajudicial captivity episode; no criminal conviction, exact release or duration is inferred.
