Verne Smith

Verne Smith was a Communist and National Miners' Union organizer jailed in the January 4, 1932 raid on the union's Southern District headquarters at Pineville, Kentucky, during the 1931–32 Harlan–Bell County coal strike. Seized with Vincent Kemenovich and six others and charged with criminal syndicalism — a charge that carried up to twenty-one years — he was held at Pineville and then Harlan. He was one of the last three Communists freed from the Harlan jail on April 16, 1932, and was to be tried the following month on a criminal-syndicalism indictment. The prisoners were freed after a national International Labor Defense campaign.