Biography
Louis Allen was a Los Angeles member of the Industrial Workers of the World, convicted with eight co-defendants under California's Criminal Syndicalism Act and sentenced to an indeterminate term of one to fourteen years. He was imprisoned at Folsom State Prison from December 1921 as prisoner number 12026.
A scholarly history records that guards at Folsom covered his head with a blanket, dragged him from solitary confinement and beat him unconscious, and that complaints were filed with the prison board.
His release date is in conflict by one day. A compilation gives September 11, 1925, while a contemporary newspaper report of September 11 says the release would happen "tomorrow", which would make it September 12. The compilation date is recorded and the conflict is noted rather than silently resolved.
This was a state prosecution. An earlier version of this record classified it as a federal Espionage or Sedition Act case.
The June 1925 labor-press political-prisoner birthday notice lists him at Folsom Prison, Represa, under prisoner number 12026 — matching the number already recorded here — with a June 22 birthday (no birth year is given).
