Biography
Jimmy Ford was a young Black Pioneer leader arrested after protesting racial discrimination at the Bronxdale Swimming Pool in New York. Judge De Lucas sentenced him to a year of imprisonment in 1932. The Young Communist League and International Labor Defense campaigned for his release alongside their campaign for the Scottsboro defendants.
Page 1 announces an October 5 Harlem demonstration also demanding Ford’s release and says he had recently received a one-year term for protesting discrimination at the Bronxdale Swimming Pool. This corroborates the existing prosecution; a one-year imposed term is not a measured total served and the proposed demonstration is not release.
The December 1932 directory printed in the January 1933 Labor Defender calls the Bronxdale Swimming Pool protester James Ford and reports that he started serving an indeterminate term on September 5, 1932. It parenthetically refers to breaking parole. The report supplies no complete discharge date or measured total for this confinement.
