Biography
Wilma Conners was an Oklahoma City unemployed worker and mother of two children. She was prosecuted after a May 1934 demonstration demanding food at the Federal Emergency Relief Administration office. Judge Edward Vaught sentenced her to a year and a day in the federal women’s prison at Alderson, West Virginia. While she was imprisoned, her children were sent to their father in California. After her release in 1936, the International Labor Defense sought funds to help her bring them home. She also faced a separate prosecution for protests against Vaught’s handling of the relief case.
The Daily Worker reported the filing of the Oklahoma relief-demonstration defendants’ appeal on March 4, 1935, with J. O. Cooke and Stanley Beldon named as counsel. The report described the convictions as arising from the preceding May demonstration. Its stated prison terms are imposed sentences, not newly established actual service; the appeal-funding deadlines were prospective. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n055-NAT-mar-05-1935-DW-Q.pdf#page=3
The same appeal report described Conners as a Black mother of two children. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n055-NAT-mar-05-1935-DW-Q.pdf#page=3
The Daily Worker of March 4, 1935, page 1, in an Oklahoma City March 3 dispatch, reports the ten relief-demonstration defendants sentenced yesterday, March 2. It individually names Hopkins as receiving eighteen months and Conners as receiving one year, describes Conners as a Black mother of two, and identifies Judge Edward Vaught and prosecutor W. Lewis. The contemporary one-year summary for Conners is retained alongside the more specific existing year-and-a-day account; it does not replace that sentence or establish actual service. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n054-NAT-mar-04-1935-DW-Q.pdf
The family-relief account describes nearly seven months already served in the federal West Virginia prison under a one-year-and-one-day sentence, with two children cared for by their father. Seven months is an intermediate observation in the existing Oklahoma relief prosecution, not its total duration or an exact release date. Labor Defender, December 1935, original PDF page 16. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1935/v11n12-dec-1935-orig-LD.pdf#page=16
Rose Baron’s signed Prisoners Relief Department appeal reports that Conners had completed her year-and-a-day federal sentence only a few weeks before the June2,1936 issue and had returned to Oklahoma. Her two children were a10-year-old boy and12-year-old girl; they had been sent to their divorced father in California under pressure attributed to the sentencing judge. After release she learned her son was ill and requested a $65 loan to retrieve both children. The article prints Anderson, West Virginia for the federal women’s prison; the existing Alderson identification is retained. The report corroborates physical release but supplies no exact discharge day, and its relative timing is not converted into a date. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1936/v19n10-jun-02-1936-NM.pdf#page=31
Conners is named among eleven defendants held under $500 bail for protests to Judge Edward Vaught over the May 1934 relief prosecution. The paper gives a collective one-year to eighteen-month range for the earlier relief sentences, not a new individual sentence.