Biography
Willie Joe Hart was a seventeen-year-old Black volunteer organizer for the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing & Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA-CIO) in Tallapoosa County, Alabama. In October 1938 he was arrested by Sheriff Corprew on a fabricated highway-robbery charge and, after what the defense called a farcical trial, sentenced to fifteen years — a frame-up meant to break the union's drive against landlord control of WPA relief jobs.
