History

Bernard Ades

Attorney, International Labor Defense · active 1931-1932

A Baltimore attorney for the International Labor Defense who took up the case of Euel Lee after Lee's arrest at Ocean City and his removal to Baltimore ahead of a lynch mob at Snow Hill. He fought the case on the exclusion of Black men from Maryland juries and won a reversal in the Court of Appeals in July 1932. The Milford Chronicle of 28 October 1932, plainly hostile, credited him with the consequence anyway: 'Ades making a point that there were no negroes on the jury that tried him won an appeal which led to the placing of names of negroes on every jury list in every county in Maryland eventually.' At the first trial he was accused by his own co-counsel's summation of nothing; it was he and David Levinson who accused Ocean City's chief of police, Robert Allen, of substituting evidence.

In the record (1)

  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.

    International Labor DefenseEuel LeeAlbert C. Ritchie

    Source · checked 2026-08-10