Biography
Fred Keith was arrested with Israel Berlin while loading copies of the August Southern Worker into a car in Birmingham on August 2, 1934. Page 1’s August 3 dispatch says police confiscated the entire edition after an informer’s tip and lodged a criminal-anarchy accusation based on the paper’s political language. It supplies no individual jail admission, discharge, final disposition or duration. The image confirms Fred, and this record is distinct from Boston organizer Irving Keith. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n186-aug-04-1934-DW-LOC.pdf
Page 3 reproduces the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners’ telegram to Birmingham Commissioner W. O. Downs, signed Alfred H. Hirsch. It protests Keith and Berlin’s arrests and connects the attack on newspaper circulation with the Lawson libel case, promising publicity until dismissal. This is a defense demand, not evidence that charges were already dismissed or another detention. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n193-sect-one-aug-13-1934-DW-LOC.pdf
Page 1 reports that Birmingham city attorney John Foster admitted no further evidence and nol-prossed the criminal-anarchy prosecution against Keith and Israel Berlin. This establishes dismissal by September 4, 1934, in the existing August 2 newspaper-seizure prosecution. The wording concerns release from the charges; it does not establish a physical discharge date or actual detention duration. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n212-sep-04-1934-DW-LOC.pdf
Contemporary original newspaper source; individual page evidence retained in review audit 488. Exact individual custody dates and duration are not inferred from relative dates or collective claims.
Daily Worker, August 13, 1934; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Keith was jailed during the Southern Worker seizure.
A Birmingham dispatch dated September 21 in the September 22, 1932 Daily Worker reports that police raided the International Labor Defense office that day and arrested Fred Keith with Donald Burke and A. Landy, holding them incommunicado. The report connects the raid with preparations for a Scottsboro and civil-rights conference. This is an earlier episode than Keith’s 1934 Southern Worker prosecution; no jail-admission date, physical release or complete duration is supplied.
