Biography
Tillie Olsen was a writer and labor activist associated with the Young Communist League. She was jailed in Kansas City in 1932 for distributing leaflets to packinghouse workers. After moving to San Francisco, she was arrested again during the July 1934 general-strike crackdown. A campaign by fellow writers helped secure her release. Olsen later wrote Tell Me a Riddle, Yonnondio: From the Thirties and Silences, drawing on the lives of working people and the difficulties facing women writers.
Sender Garlin's page-7 column identifies her as Tillie Lerner and reports release on bail after roughly a couple of weeks in San Francisco jail during the general-strike raids. Quoting Robert Cantwell, it describes Judge Steiger calling her a mental case when she demanded a jury trial and Judge Golden questioning her politics. Her forthcoming trial was still prospective. Her Nebraska upbringing, Socialist-organizer father, working-class jobs and The Iron Throat publication establish the Lerner/Olsen identity already recorded; no exact release day is inferred from the publication date. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n192-aug-11-1934-DW-LOC.pdf
