Biography
Waldo Frank was an American novelist and essayist and the first chairman of the League of American Writers. He accompanied the Communist presidential candidate Earl Browder to Terre Haute, Indiana as a writer and correspondent during the Browder Midwestern campaign tour. On September 30, 1936, immediately after the party arrived by train, police arrested Browder, Frank, Seymour Waldman, Charles Stadtfeld and Andrew Remes on a vagrancy charge, in an effort to keep the campaign from speaking. Frank was held about 25 hours in the Terre Haute jail and released on October 1, 1936; all charges were dropped, with no trial or conviction and no bail required. The arrests of prominent literary and political figures drew national free-speech protest.
Page 7 prints his signed appeal for support of the Daily Worker, describing the newspaper as necessary to workers’ organizing and social change. His named portrait accompanies the article; the existing profile already has a photo. This is biographical activity, not evidence of an additional arrest or custody interval. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n233-sep-28-1934-DW-LOC.pdf
Daily Worker, April 25, 1935, pages 1 and 5: A named portrait identifies Waldo Frank as novelist and author of The Birth of David Markand among participants in the First American Writers Congress public opening at Mecca Temple on April 26. This is announced cultural and political activity, not a new arrest. Gold also writes the Change the World column; Cowley's image is an identified drawn portrait rather than a photograph. Existing portraits of Frank and Browder were preserved; missing portraits of Gold and Cowley were extracted with their original captions retained in page evidence. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n099-NAT-apr-25-1935-DW-Q.pdf
The July 1931 issue names Frank among the writers organizing a new Prisoners Relief Fund with the International Labor Defense, seeking five dollars a month for each prisoner and twenty dollars for dependents. Committee members undertook to cover overhead; Grace Hutchins was treasurer. This documents prisoner-defense work, not a new personal arrest or evidence of payments to particular prisoners. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1931/v07n02-jul-1931-New-Masses.pdf#page=41
Custody record
The contemporary release dispatch reports twenty-five hours of Terre Haute custody in 1936. His separate 1932 Kentucky seizure and beating must not be confused with the jail sentences of other relief delegates.
Daily Worker, September 28, 1934; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
The October 1 Associated Press dispatch reports that Police Chief James C. Yates released Browder and four associates from Terre Haute jail that day after their arrest the preceding morning. It individually identifies novelist Waldo Frank, national election-campaign committee member Seymour Waldman, Indiana state chairman Charles Stadtfeld and party worker Andrew Remes. Browder’s vagrancy arrest at the train station prevented his planned speech. Attorney David J. Bentall announced an intention to sue the mayor and police chief for false imprisonment; that statement is not proof that a suit was filed or damages awarded. The overnight confinement is actual custody; the account does not itself measure a precise number of hours.
Daily Worker, April 25, 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
The writers’ report meeting identifies Frank as delegation chairman and names him with Allan Taub as beaten during the February 10, 1932 Pineville arrest and kidnapping episode. Threats of buckshot on return are reported as perpetrators’ threats. This is distinct from the later Terre Haute detention.
The report names Frank and Taub as beaten during the writers’ delegation’s forced removal by deputized coal agents and businessmen. Alleged perpetrators and interference with relief are source-attributed. Exact full confinement duration remains unestablished.
The issue recalls the assault on Frank and Taub and the arrest/forced removal of the writers’ relief delegation. The recovered film was announced for a New York meeting; this is corroboration of the Kentucky relief repression, without a new separate jail term or exact restraint endpoint.
Hevener describes the writers’ relief expedition’s arrest shortly before midnight in Pineville on disorderly-conduct and public-nuisance charges. The writers were taken to police court; after dismissal they were escorted back to the hotel, ordered out and driven by a fifteen-car caravan to Cumberland Gap. Frank and Allan Taub reported being beaten there. The account establishes short coercive court custody and expulsion, not a completed prison term or an additional precise release day.
John Watts Hevener, A New Deal for Harlan: The Roosevelt Labor Policies in a Kentucky Coal Field, 1931–1939 (Ohio State University PhD dissertation, 1971), printed pages 159, 160, 163 (PDF pages 168, 169, 172). Source 805 SHA256 03766c260a4cf06629fb296358baf9e49448a191f9d290929ecd947963b0e125.
