History

International Labor Defense

association

The Communist-affiliated legal defence organisation, known on the Eastern Shore in 1932 as 'the International Labor Defense League of Baltimore'. Through its attorney Bernard Ades, with David Levinson of Philadelphia and Eli Schwarzblatt of New York, it defended Euel Lee, the man arrested at an Ocean City boarding house for the murder of the Green K. Davis family of Worcester County, and won a reversal in the Maryland Court of Appeals in July 1932 on the systematic exclusion of Black men from jury lists. Local papers treated it as an outside intrusion — the Milford Chronicle said Ades 'injected himself into the case' — while crediting its appeal with putting Black names on every jury list in Maryland.

In the record (2)

  1. 1931 · 1931-10-12

    On the night of Monday 12 October 1931 Euel Lee is taken "in the negro section of Ocean City, Md.", and by Tuesday a mob of two thousand is round the Snow Hill jail.

    Green K. Davis, his wife Iva and their daughters Elizabeth, 15, and Mary Lee, 13, were found shot and axed in their beds at Taylorsville, on the Berlin-Ocean City highway, on Monday 12 October 1931. The Milford Chronicle of 16 October: "Early Monday night the authorities received word that a man answering the description of Jones had been arrested IN THE NEGRO SECTION OF OCEAN CITY, MD. SHERIFF PURNELL AND STATE'S ATTORNEY CHILD went to Ocean City and returned with the prisoner" — with $70 including gold pieces, rings and a pocketbook identified as the Davis family's. The Washington Times of 13 October, from Snow Hill: "Angered by failure of Pocomoke county authorities to obtain a confession from Orphan Jones, 55-year-old negro... a mob of 2,000 persons surrounded the county jail here this afternoon and demanded lynching of the negro." He was moved to the Baltimore city jail. On 18 November the Washington Times reported "a company of State militia, traveling in three busses, and a detail of 25 State policemen" escorting him to Cambridge for trial, "as much to protect [Bernard] Ades as to guard Lee against mob feeling", after Governor Ritchie promised "the negro would be adequately protected". The Communist Daily Worker, 15 and 16 October, called it "a brazen frame-up", reported the International Labor Defense denied access, and said a deputy warden told its attorney Lee was being "patched up" as he had been "busted up" the day before.

    The 1932 pass reconstructed this case from its trials. 1931 has its beginning, and the beginning is an Ocean City story: an arrest in a part of the town the papers name only as "the negro section", made by the county sheriff in person, and a lynch mob two thousand strong twenty miles inland. The case would end by putting Black names on every jury list in Maryland.

    Euel LeeBernard AdesAlbert C. Ritchie

    Source · checked 2026-08-10

  2. 1933 · 1933-10-27

    Euel Lee, arrested at an Ocean City boarding house in 1931, was hanged in Baltimore on 27 October 1933

    The case that began when Ocean City's chief of police arrested a Black farm labourer at Mrs. Martha Miller's boarding house ended two years later at the Maryland Penitentiary. The Supreme Court declined to review the case in the week of 9 October; about fifty men and women came from Baltimore in two trucks to picket the Court with placards reading 'Save Euel Lee' and were turned back in the Capitol grounds by park police. Governor Ritchie heard a clemency plea on 19 October and set the date. Lee was hanged early on 27 October. His attorney Bernard Ades of the International Labor Defense claimed the body under Lee's will for a public funeral in New York sponsored by Communists; the Deputy Attorney General ruled he could not have it, and Warden Patrick Brady said 'We're going to give Lee a decent burial tomorrow right here.' The appeal Ades won in 1932 had already put Black men's names on every jury list in Maryland.

    Source · checked 2026-08-10