Biography
Tony De Bernardini was a union coal miner arrested during the Pennsylvania state-police raid on a Sacco-Vanzetti protest meeting of striking miners at Cheswick on August 22, 1927. Troopers beat him so severely that his skull was fractured, then held him incommunicado in a Pittsburgh jail under $1,500 bail on a riot charge. He was later released on bail. The exact release date and final disposition have not been located.
Vern Smith names Tony de Bernardini among ten Cheswick defendants whose original murder accusation was reduced to rioting, inciting to riot and resisting an officer. The postponed prosecution does not prove uninterrupted 1927–1929 imprisonment. The retrospective calls the killed trooper Holt, while another article in this issue calls the victim James Downey; that internal inconsistency is not silently reconciled. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n146-NY-aug-26-1929-DW-LOC.pdf#page=6
Sender Garlin's December 13, 1929 Daily Worker courtroom report, spelling the name Tony De Bernards, says the August 22, 1927 Cheswick police attack fractured his skull, paralyzed his arm and caused bleeding from his nose and ears. It says police threw him unconscious into a truck, held him under $1,500 bail and later let him go. The writer described him as permanently crippled; that is a contemporary report, not a later medical evaluation. No precise discharge is inferred. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-nat/v06-n240-NAT-dec-13-1929-DW-Q.pdf#page=3
