Biography
Convicted in Charlotte, North Carolina on October 21, 1929 of conspiracy to murder Gastonia, NC police chief Orville F. Aderholt during the June 7, 1929 night raid on the National Textile Workers Union (a Communist Party-affiliated industrial union) strikers' tent colony at the Loray Mill, Gastonia. The 1929 Loray Mill strike was the most violent textile strike in U.S. history and involved the murder of organizer-balladeer Ella May Wiggins (shot September 14, 1929). After their first trial ended in a mistrial on September 9, 1929, prosecutors brought a second trial focused only on the seven principal NTW organizers — Fred Beal, Clarence Miller, Joseph Harrison, K. Y. Hendricks, George Carter, Louis McLaughlin, and Robert Allen — and won convictions. Sentences: Beal/Harrison/Miller 17-20 years each; Hendricks/Carter/McLaughlin/Allen 5-7 years each. While appeals were pending the seven jumped bail in early 1930 and (with Communist Party assistance) fled to the Soviet Union. Only Fred Beal returned to face his sentence: he surrendered in 1938 and served until parole in 1942.
