The daily worker., 1930-06-30
By ]. LOUIS ENGpAHL.

By j. LOUIS ENGDAHL.
THE fight for the lives of the six workers
facing the electric chair in Atlanta, Georgia,
enters new phase of struggle.
Just as in Gastonia, North Carolina one
year ago, in the face of the international rage
of labor, so in Atlanta Ga, today the judicial
lynchers halt temporarily in their tracks. They
feel the pressure of the working class protest.
The right glare of publicity gradually increas-
ing, reveals to the world the savage murders
of workers which they contemplate.
Just as in Gastonia, last year, so in Atlanta
today this situation creates as great and grave
a danger for the working class In the Gas
tonia struggle the protest subsisted when it
became certain that the sixteen strikers and
organizers of the National Textile Workers
Union had been saved from the electric chair
of the mill owners and their Manville-Jenckes
leadership. It became easier for the lynch law
courts operating in Mecklenberg County under
the direction of the suave and cultured Judge
Barnhill to impose living death sentences, to-
falling to 1T years Imprisonment, on the sew
en- Gastonia prisoners. These practical death
sentences are now on appeal to the North
Carolina state supreme courts and before the
American and the international working class.
The death threats of the Atlanta lynchers,
however, must be defeated completely by the
Not even prison sentences!
Do not be misled by the fact that the ar
rogant Assistant Solicitor General John Hud-
son, who threatens with the electric chair every
militant worker coming into Georgia, hesitates
in pushing for immediate trials of M. H. Pow
ers, Joseph Carr, Ann Burlak Herbert Newton
Henry Story and Mary Dalton. More workers
were sent to the chair" in Georgia last year
than were done to death by capitalist class
justice in the executioners' chambers of any
other state in the nation. These were all Ne
gro workers.
The prosecutor, Hudson, who has issued his
warning to all militant labor organizers to
"study the excellent laws of Georgia" (for the
ruling class), thought he had "a perfect case"
in the fact that he had been able to arrest
Ann Burlak the organizer of the International
Labor Defense and Mary Dalton, the organizer
of the National Textile Workers Union, at
the mass meeting of the American Negro La
Dor Congress at which the Negro worker,
Story, was the chairman, and Herbert Newton,
the organizer of the AN.LC. was speaking
when the police attack took place Hudson had
forgotten the concession wrung from Southern
chivalry' in the Gastonia case that, 1--WE do
not fry women in North Carolina" Hudson
demanded that the death-dealing electric cur
rent be shot through the bodies of Ann Bur-
lax and Mary Dalton, as well as the Negro
and white workers, Newton, Story, Powers and
Carr. This is still the demand of Georgia
lynch law "justice" speaking through its pros
ecutor, Hudson, who carefully mobilizes every
possible bit of Southern ruling class prejudice,
studies all militant working class literature
for seditious phrases and insurrectionary ut
terances, while the Ku Klux Klan, that has
its home offices in Atlanta, does its part to
whip into action the lynching fever against
the growing unity of Negro and white workers
in the South. Hudson still believes he has his
perfect case" against the aGdacity of Negro
ard white workers meeting together and plan
ring united action. the basis of the capital Of
fense of attempting to ncite insurrection"
and distributing insurrectionary literature"
This remains a struggle against death SEN
tences.
The Atlanta courts at first demanded that
the prisoners be held in the Infamous Fulton
Tower Prison without bail. Here these work
ers are submitted to the worst prosecutions.
Joseph Carr, the 19-year-old West Virginia
coal miner was put in death cell on "Mur-
derers' Row." and kept there in spite Of all
protests. The court evidently believed that
young Carrs spirit could be broken through
grim association with three convicted slayers
already awaiting their day Of doom, and with
alleged killers facing trial for murder.
Twice have | penetrated with great diff
Guilty to the dungeons of this Georgia bastille.
The two Negroes Newton and Story, we're
not only isolated from the white but also from
the prisoners of their own race. A "blind door"
shuts off their cell from the other cell blocks.
Reports received state that even food sent in
to them by the International Labor Defense
conveniently disappears.
Powers is kept by himself. Ann Burlak and
Mary Dalton are denied even the meager priv