Original source: First Amendment Center
Imagine, for example, the bravery of a young black man who traveled to the South to enlist members for the Communist Party in the early 1930s. The Chicago Defender called him a “young Communist martyr.”
At age 19, Angelo Herndon moved from Kentucky to Atlanta in 1932 to help recruit for the Communist Party. He was charged under a Reconstruction-era state law prohibiting attempts to incite an insurrection. Herndon had helped organize a hunger-relief protest that consisted of 600 whites and 400 blacks. State officials said he had distributed Communist Party leaflets and had helped organize meetings to increase party membership.
Officials arrested and beat Herndon as he went to his post office box to retrieve his mail. In jail, Herndon suffered immensely. In his autobiography, Let Me Live (1937), he wrote: “For three months, I rotted in the degenerate atmosphere of the jail. There were times when I was afraid for my sanity.”
In January 1933, the state of Georgia sought the death penalty against Herndon. The prosecutors played on the jury’s fears of Communists. They said that the defendant would “lead a red army into this country and destroy our civilization.” Herndon countered that the capitalists used “racial prejudice as a means of exploiting workmen — white and black.” Later that month, a Fulton County Superior Court jury sentenced him to 18-20 years in prison.
