Biography
Will MacQueen was a Black miner serving a year at the Blawnox Workhouse, one of the National Miners' Union strikers jailed after the 1931 Pittsburgh-district coal strike. The Blawnox (Allegheny County) Workhouse in Pennsylvania held National Miners' Union strikers convicted after the 40,000-strong 1931 Pittsburgh-district coal strike, serving up to six years; the ILD's roster of these class-war prisoners ran through the Labor Defender.
Page 1’s July 24 bulletin prints William McQueen among the Canonsburg miners arrested on inciting-to-riot allegations and specifically identifies McQueen and Henry Stacey as Black. It reports 2,500-dollar bail for each except Thompson. The name variant and same Black coal-strike cohort are associated here with the existing Will MacQueen record; exact arrest day, physical release and custody duration are not supplied, and no second person is created. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n178-NY-jul-25-1931-DW-LOC.pdf
Labor Defender, October 1932 (PDF page 21): The roster identifies Will MacQueen, Pete Jugrine and Freniando Pecirello as Black miners currently serving one-year nominal sentences at Blawnox following the miners’ strike. This is the article’s racial description, preserved as attribution without replacing existing demographic fields or treating the nominal year as completed time served. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1932/v08n10-oct-1932-LD.pdf#page=21
