Biography
Clifford "Cliff" James was a sharecropper and a leader of the Share Croppers' Union whose farm was the site of the 19 December 1932 Reeltown, Alabama shootout. Wounded in the shoulder, he crawled to Tuskegee Institute, was turned over to the police, and died in the Montgomery County jail on 27 December 1932 while held in dying condition. On 19 December 1932 a sheriff's posse attacked members of the Communist-led Share Croppers' Union near Reeltown in Tallapoosa County, Alabama, when they resisted the seizure of a member's livestock for debt. Several croppers were shot; the survivors were charged with "assault with intent to murder" and held for the grand jury at the Dadeville jail under $750 bail. The case, following the 1931 Camp Hill affair, became a major ILD Southern defense.
