Biography
Joseph Gelders was a physicist-turned-organizer associated with the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, arrested in Birmingham, Alabama in 1940 as a 'vagrant' for distributing leaflets challenging the city's Ordinance 4902, which authorized warrantless arrest of 'suspicious' persons. A prominent Southern labor and civil-liberties activist, he had earlier survived a notorious 1936 kidnapping and flogging by anti-union vigilantes.