Biography
William Fisher was an International Labor Defense member in Niagara Falls, New York. On August 27, 1934, a gang attacked a defense meeting for Alphonse Davis, a Black worker facing a rape prosecution. Fisher tried to protect two women at the meeting and was severely injured. He was placed under arrest while hospitalized with cuts and a possible skull fracture. A jury convicted him of assault and battery on October 25. He received an indeterminate sentence of two and a half to five years, which the International Labor Defense appealed. He remained imprisoned in December 1935.
The November 12, 1934 Daily Worker reports an ILD appeal in his case and discusses his August 27 arrest at a Niagara Falls defense meeting for Alphonso Davis. It calls the punishment five years, the maximum of the separately recorded two-and-a-half-to-five-year sentence. The affidavit and defense claims concerning Davis do not establish five actual years of service or a new custody episode. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n270-NY-nov-12-1934-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2
The August 29, 1934 Daily Worker reports from Niagara Falls on August 28 that Fisher remained under arrest while hospitalized after an attack on the previous night’s Alphonso Davis defense meeting. A possible murder accusation was speculative, not a charge established as filed. This issue describes Fisher as Black, whereas the November 12 account calls him white; that source discrepancy is retained without changing his race or inferring a different custody episode. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n207-aug-29-1934-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
The October 25 Niagara Falls dispatch reports his assault-and-battery guilty verdict after the attack on the Alphonse Davis defense meeting, where he tried to protect two women. It says a possible five-year sentence would be considered Friday before Judge Harcourt. That future exposure is not a sentence already imposed in this report and does not replace his separately established two-and-a-half-to-five-year term. The source calls him Black; the existing conflicting race accounts remain unresolved.
