Biography
Doris Parks was a Communist activist jailed during the 1931–32 Harlan–Bell County, Kentucky coal strike. In February 1932 she traveled to Pineville with the writers' delegation led by Waldo Frank (the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners, which went to the coal fields to support the striking miners) and was jailed on a criminal-syndicalism charge, then moved to the jail at Harlan. She was one of the last three Communists freed from the Harlan jail on April 16, 1932, and was to be tried the following month on a criminal-syndicalism indictment. The National Miners' Union organizers seized in the January 4, 1932 raid on the union's Pineville headquarters — with whom she was held — each faced up to twenty-one years; the prisoners were freed after a national International Labor Defense campaign.