Biography
Tom Nash was given a ten-year prison sentence in Walla Walla Prison for violating the state's criminal syndicalism law. Nash's constant protest of prison conditions resulted in prison officials placing him in solitary confinement and eventually transferring him to the isolation ward, a unit used to segregate "incorrigible" prisoners from the general prison population.
The January 28, 1924 issue of The Daily Worker individually listed Tom Nash among the political and class-war prisoners at the state prison at Walla Walla, Washington, in an appeal to fund newspaper subscriptions for imprisoned people. This is a contemporary custody observation; the publication date does not establish admission, release, or a total period served.
The February 26, 1924 Daily Worker political-prisoner roster individually prints Tom Nash with historical prisoner number 9431. The entry appears under Washington State Penitentiary, Walla Walla. This is a contemporary institutional identifier, not a federal BOP register number. No admission or release date, individual sentence length, actual duration, organizational membership or present status is inferred.
Writing from Walla Walla as prisoner 9431 in the September 1926 Labor Defender, Nash says he was convicted in June 1921 on a criminal-syndicalism charge arising from Centralia, Washington. He describes making beaded necklaces to support himself and says that he and four other prisoners were refusing parole in solidarity with the eight Centralia defendants convicted of murder after the 1919 confrontation. June 1921 is a conviction month, not an established admission or sentencing date; no exact release or new served counter is inferred.