Biography
Harry Roth was a Communist Party member arrested in Chester, Pennsylvania on October 2, 1931 while speaking at an open-air election campaign rally. He and Young Communist League member John Adams were indicted under the Flynn sedition law. Their trial was postponed from January 18, 1932 to the week beginning March 21, and both were out on bail during the postponement. Roth was subsequently sentenced to one year in the Delaware County jail at Media.
Page 1 dates both men’s Chester arrest to October 2, 1931 at an open-air Communist election rally and reports eleven Flynn Sedition Act counts. A January 18 trial was postponed to an unspecified day in the week of March 21 because a federal witness was unavailable. The report explicitly says both were out on $2,000 bail. This establishes bail liberty by February 9, 1932, not continuous confinement through trial or a final disposition.
Robert Dunn’s January 1933 article on prison book censorship reports that a friend tried to give Harry Roth a Dickens novel at Delaware County Prison in Media, Pennsylvania, but it was refused despite the lack of a prison library. Dunn also reports a lawyer’s statement that political and economic books sent to prisoners were excluded. These are the article’s attributed accounts of reading restrictions, not a new custody episode.
The December 1932 directory printed in the January 1933 Labor Defender describes Harry Roth as convicted on April 7, 1932 in the sedition prosecution and reports a one-year term and a $500 fine. The printed date explicitly identifies conviction, so it is not separately treated as a sentencing day. The source does not establish that the fine was paid or that the nominal year equals his actual completed custody.
