Biography
Jessie London Wakefield was an International Labor Defense field representative sent to Harlan County, Kentucky to defend the jailed coal miners. Her car was dynamited, and she was herself arrested and held in the Harlan jail under $10,000 bail on two charges of criminal syndicalism for representing the ILD. The Harlan County, Kentucky coal war of 1931 pitted the Communist-led National Miners' Union against the operators, Sheriff John Henry Blair's deputies, and the state militia. After the 5 May 1931 "Battle of Evarts," in which a gun battle left several dead, more than a hundred miners were jailed: dozens were indicted for murder and faced the electric chair, dozens more charged with "banding and confederating" or criminal syndicalism. Clarence Darrow and the ILD led the defense.