Biography
Theodore Richards, also called Ted Richards in the same issue, was prosecuted for inciting to riot in an April 1933 Philadelphia eviction fight. The annual review reports a two-year sentence, a new trial obtained by the International Labor Defense and his actual liberty on $1,000 bail. No exact individual custody dates or measured service are supplied. The separate Civil War prisoner listed only as Richards is not this identity. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1934/v10n02-feb-1934-lab-def.pdf#page=7
Theodore Richards, also called Ted Richards, was a young Black Philadelphia worker sentenced by Judge McDevitt to two years in the county jail after an eviction-defense gathering. The June 21, 1933 Young Worker, printed page 7 (PDF page 34), says he organized unemployed neighbors to resist evictions and criticized local officials, and describes his arrest and immediate sentencing at a gathering at an unemployed worker’s home during the preceding month. The Young Communist League and ILD were campaigning for his release. Two years is the imposed sentence, not an established completed term; no exact arrest or sentencing day or formal statutory charge is supplied. This is the contemporary Communist newspaper’s account; allegations of political targeting are attributed to the paper. Exact custody dates and complete duration are not inferred beyond the evidence stated. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/youngworker/v11n01-10-yw-1933-Jan-June.pdf#page=34.
The January 23, 1934 Daily Worker reports that Richards freedom had been won in a second trial in Philadelphia during the preceding week. It describes the original sentence by Judge McDevitt as two years and a $500 fine for organizing resistance to the eviction of a Black family. This supplies a later trial disposition beyond the earlier bail/new-trial report, but no exact release day or actual custody total. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n020-jan-23-1934-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
The August 15 Philadelphia dispatch in the August 17, 1933 Daily Worker links the planned August 22 Scottsboro meetings with the campaign to free Ted Richards and names Judge Henry McDevitt. The Ted/Theodore variant, Philadelphia eviction-resistance prosecution and the already recorded McDevitt surname identify the existing defendant. The article describes him as nineteen and gives the sentence as two months, whereas the other contemporary accounts already retained here give two years. This discrepancy remains attributed to the report; neither figure is substituted as actual time served. The source supplies no exact arrest, sentencing, admission or physical release day, and no age or birth date is inferred.
