Biography
Clay East was a co-founder of the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, which he helped organize in 1934 at Tyronza, Arkansas with H. L. Mitchell. During the June 1936 trial of fellow organizer Dave Benson at Forrest City, East was struck over the head and jailed 'for safe keeping' amid the planter terror against the union — a leading white Socialist of the Arkansas sharecropper movement.
