Biography
Tom Crawford was a Black farm worker and union leader in the 1934 Seabrook Farms strike near Bridgeton, New Jersey. He had worked at the farm since 1928. At a public hearing in July, Crawford testified that deputies had locked him and other strikers in a refrigerator converted into a jail, and that Justice J. Ellsworth Long conducted trials in Charles Seabrook's private office. The International Labor Defense defended the arrested workers and helped organize the hearing. Crawford was in jail after the strike settlement, while the union continued defending its organizers against arrests and vigilante attacks.
The Seabrook strike report places him still in jail and credits Donald and Elinor Henderson with continuing relief and organizing under repeated police raids and arrests. This is a contemporary observation of the existing strike prosecution; it supplies no new exact admission, release or completed term. Labor Defender, September 1934, original PDF page 9. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1934/v10n08-sep-1934-orig-LD.pdf#page=9
