Biography
William J. Davids was a Marine Workers’ League seaman in New Orleans. Police arrested him during a raid on the league’s headquarters in late 1929 and seized union and International Labor Defense literature. The ILD and attorney R. A. Darling secured the dismissal of the sedition charges and his release in December 1929. The arrests were part of a campaign against the league’s organizing among Gulf Coast seamen.
1920s remaining-entry review: The November 29, 1929 Daily Worker, page 2, column 3, individually names Victor Aronson and William J. Davis as the Marine Workers League organizers arrested Monday while distributing leaflets and Marine Workers Voices near the New Orleans cotton mills. The article begins on page 1 with a November 28 dateline, making Monday November 25. The full page 2 scan was visually checked by the research agent. This was the earlier paired arrest, distinct from the subsequent headquarters arrests of Morgan and Brown. Davis is the spelling in this original report; the imported Davids identity spelling is noted but not changed or merged here. Only the arrest date is corrected; existing release precision and unresolved admission are not inferred from it.
The December 25 New Orleans dispatch reports ILD secretary Stephen H. Allison’s announcement that all four recently arrested defendants had been released from jail, their charges dropped and their bondsmen freed of obligations through the work of attorney R. A. Darling and the ILD. It names Victor Aaronson, William Davids, Leonard Brown and John S. Morgan. This is a release-by-December-25 bound, not proof of a December 25 discharge day. Aaronson and Davids are the spellings in this report; no duplicate profile is created.
The seamen-defense article individually names Victor Aronson, William J. Davids, John Morgan and Leonard Brown in the New Orleans arrests and rearrests, and says all four faced a sedition accusation based on the November Labor Defender and union leaflets. The account supplies no individual new booking or discharge day; generic rearrest wording is not split into invented additional episodes. Independently documented December release evidence is preserved. The accompanying photograph shows seamen in a German port, not these defendants.
A New Orleans dispatch dated December 15, published in the Daily Worker on December 17, 1929, reports that the International Labor Defense secured dismissal of the sedition charges against Victor Aronson and William Davids. The article's heading reports their release and its text identifies the Marine Workers League raid and seized labor literature. This paired identity and prosecution match the existing New Orleans records, with the Davis/Davids spelling difference retained in the earlier account. This supplies an earlier release-report bound than the December 25 dispatch already preserved here, not an exact physical discharge day. Its separate statement that similar charges were still held out against John Morgan and William Brown does not itself prove those men's continuing detention. No intake date, additional imprisonment episode or duration is inferred.
