Biography
William O'Donnell was a working-class organizer active in the Seabrook Farm strike led by the Agricultural and Cannery Workers Industrial Union and in relief struggles. The Daily Worker of December 8, 1934, pages 1-2, reports his release from Cumberland County Jail at 10 a.m. on December 7 following a protest campaign and a fourteen-day hunger strike. He was an International Labor Defense section organizer when arrested. His quoted statement says he won release after three weeks of a six-month sentence; that rounded service account does not establish an exact admission day. Five carloads of workers met him at the jail. This 1934 organizer is distinct from the later Catholic priest Bill O'Donnell; no identity link is established. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n293-Nat-dec-08-DW-LOC.pdf
Daily Worker, November 30, 1934: Page 1 reports that a joint meeting of Marine Workers Industrial Union West Side locals and the Waterfront Unemployment Council protested his imprisonment and sent greetings to him at Cumberland County Jail. It says he had ended his hunger strike under threat of forcible feeding. This is an intermediate report during the already recorded confinement, before the separately established December 7 release; it supplies neither an exact admission day nor a measured detention duration. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n286-NAT-nov-30-1934-DW-LOC.pdf
A worker’s report in the January 17, 1935 Daily Worker says Bill O’Donnell was released from Bridgeton jail after twenty-three days of a six-month sentence following the workers’ campaign. This supplies a reported elapsed duration, not a replacement for the separately documented December 7, 1934 release day or an inferred admission day. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n015-Nat-jan-17-1935-DW-LOC.pdf#page=4
Page 3’s January 13 Bridgeton dispatch reports that eleven remaining Seabrook farm and relief-strike prisoners were freed after his earlier hunger-strike release, protests and a united-front campaign pressed prosecutor Thomas G. Tusso. The eleven are unnamed. This confirms the sequence of the wider defense campaign without assigning their individual release dates to O’Donnell or creating anonymous profiles. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n014-not-15-Nat-jan-16-1935-DW-LOC.pdf
Daily Worker, January 4, 1935, page 3: The announcement of a January 11 Newark Lenin memorial meeting identifies William O'Donnell as the Seabrook strike organizer recently released from jail through mass pressure. The report supplies completed release by publication, without an exact discharge day or measured jail duration. His proposed speaking appearance is prospective. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n004-Nat-jan-04-1935-DW-LOC.pdf
PDF page 14's Vivian Dahl account says O'Donnell was freed after twenty-two days of a six-month sentence, through a South Jersey united-front campaign. It names prosecutor Tuso and committing magistrate Creamer, and distinguishes his actual release from a proposal to nolle-prose all strike cases. The twenty-two-day figure differs from another report's twenty-three days and an earlier rounded three weeks; all are preserved without choosing a false exact total or deriving an admission day. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1935/v11n01-jan-1935-orig-LD.pdf
Contemporary original newspaper source; individual page evidence retained in review audit 263. Exact individual custody dates and duration are not inferred from relative dates or collective claims.
Daily Worker, November 30, 1934; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Daily Worker, January 16, 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Daily Worker, January 4, 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Labor Defender, January 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Jamieson reproduces Leif Dahl’s 1935 account identifying William O’Donnell as a former state trooper, member of the Vineland American Legion post executive board, and organizer for the Vineland Unemployed and International Labor Defense. Dahl describes the free-speech prosecution, hunger strike and defense campaign and reports twenty-three days actually served before unconditional release. That reported figure corroborates one existing contemporary account but does not resolve the preserved twenty-two-day versus twenty-three-day conflict or establish an exact admission date.
Stuart Jamieson, Labor Unionism in American Agriculture, Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin 836 (1946), physical pages 460–461, printed pages ten lower; SHA256 ad6e201117c1a456cf2f4ff4fe09fa567bab099a1e919a7a3150ca82ed37960e
