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You cannot kill the working class.
Born out of the Depression Era was Angelo Herndon’s fight. And those six words became his singular mission. It was also the title of a pamphlet he wrote at 24.
During the Great Depression, the American labor movement was at a crossroads. Unions, once seen as radical threats, gained momentum as workers sought relief from economic hardship. Yet, the wraith of anti-union sentiment loomed large. Against this backdrop, Herndon, a young Black labor organizer, emerged as a pivotal figure in the struggle for workers' rights. His story is not a vestige of the past. His resolve resonates with workers today as they grapple with issues like systemic discrimination, the precarity of the gig economy, and the erosion of labor protections.
As Herndon recalled in his manifesto, his journey toward activism kickstarted in 1930 at 17 when he became involved with the Communist Party USA, aligning himself with its vision of economic equity, racial parity, and working-class advancement. He was also deeply inspired by the Scottsboro Boys case — nine young men between 12 and 19 falsely accused of raping two white women. The blatant injustice of the trial, combined with Herndon’s growing conviction that the unity of Black and white laborers could lead to meaningful social change, drove him further into action. He believed that a collective, interracial labor movement was essential to dismantling the economic and racial hierarchies that oppressed workers.
This ideology led him to spearhead a bold campaign for worker solidarity during the height of the Depression when financial instability and racial tensions were at a peak. On June 30, 1932, Herndon led around 1,000 unemployed workers in a rally at the Fulton County Courthouse, in downtown Atlanta, demanding food, jobs, and the renewal of unemployment payments.
What made this protest particularly stirring — and alarming to Jim Crow southerners — was that Herndon, with his charisma and persuasive speeches, united Black and white workers in a peaceful march. For Herndon, capitalism was built off the backs of the working class, and their shared hardship transcended race. It was about survival.
The protest rattled the city, raising concerns about future unrest. What was also revolutionary was not just that a teenager had united young and old but that he disrupted Southern racial norms. Local leaders buckled, fearing an uprising and labor shortage. They approved emergency funds on July 1— within 24 hours of the protest, according to an article in Phylon, a magazine on race and culture published by Clark Atlanta University.
This came at a cost for Herndon. Authorities arrested him on July 11 while he was collecting mail from the post office. While he was in custody, police searched his home, found communist materials, and charged him with inciting insurrection under the 1866 version of the state’s insurrection law, a statute with a history rooted in the suppression of slave revolts but later broadened in scope to address other forms of rebellion. It imposed the death penalty for possessing or distributing insurgent materials. His trial quickly became a high-profile legal battle, and he soon emerged as an international symbol of resistance, championing the fight against racism and the oppression of African Americans and workers alike.
Herndon's legacy of defiance, rooted in the strife of economic hardship, began long before that pivotal moment. One of eight siblings, Herndon was born Eugene Angelo Braxton Herndon on May 6, 1913, in Wyoming, Ohio. After his father, Paul, died from pneumonia contracted in the mines, 13-year-old Herndon left home with his brother Leo in search of work to support their mother, Hattie. As he recalls in his manifesto, they first found work as coal shoveling contractors for DeBardeleben Coal Corporation in Lexington, Kentucky, earning $70 a month. There, Herndon witnessed the company’s exploitation: workers were underpaid, lived in squalid conditions, and bore the costs of gear and commuting. Without a union, they had no protection and could do little but grumble.
By early 1930, with the Depression setting in, Herndon recalled DeBardeleben cutting pay by 26%, prompting most workers to quit. The brothers did, too — joining Goodyear Rubber in Birmingham, where Herndon says they faced similar mistreatment when the company withheld their first paycheck to cover transportation and food. Unprotected by any union, the brothers moved on to Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad, where a co-worker’s death due to a foreman’s negligence spurred Herndon to take a stand. Backed by his co-workers, Herndon would later write in his manifesto that he succeeded in getting the foreman fired and compensation for the worker’s family, marking his first lesson in organizing.
Energized, he attended a Birmingham Unemployment Council meeting, where he met members of the Communist party. Though small, the party's Depression-era evangelism to African Americans, especially in the South, emphasized racial parity and class struggle. As the Depression deepened, their message resonated with the hungry, tired, and desperate seeking food, shelter, and work.
“I knew that this was what I'd been looking for all my life,” he wrote of that moment. “That date means a lot more to me than my birthday or any other day in my life. They believed in organizing and sticking together. They believed that we didn't have to have bosses on our backs. They believed that Negroes ought to have equal rights with whites.”
He formally joined the Council and became a party organizer, mobilizing workers of all races on the shared struggles of the working class.
In 1930, as he’d later write in his manifesto, the 17-year-old represented Birmingham at the National Unemployment Convention in Chicago, organized an anti-lynching conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and represented at the Trade Union Unity League in New Orleans shortly after the Scottsboro Boys’ arrest.
After drawing scrutiny from Alabama officials for his union activity, Herndon headed to Atlanta, where he soon began organizing workers. Shortly after, according to an article in The Journal of Negro History, Herndon spearheaded a committee to mobilize interracial groups to advocate for rent assistance and unemployment insurance. “I couldn't say how many workers were unemployed,” he’d later write. “The officials [kept] this information carefully hidden.”
By mid-June 1932, unemployment checks stopped altogether for thousands of residents, and the state shut down relief centers, forcing some people to leave for farm work. Many objected, demanding more help from the city. Herndon, now 19, stepped up, calling on officials to end the out-of-city work campaign and restore unemployment relief.
This is what led Herndon to galvanize the unemployed in the unforgettable march that last day in June — one that catapulted him into history. It also led to his subsequent monitoring and arrest. “I was placed in a [cell] and was shown a large electric chair, and told to spill everything I knew about the movement,” Herndon later remembered. “I refused to talk, and was held incommunicado for eleven days. Finally, I smuggled out a letter through another prisoner, and the International Labor Defense got on the job.”
During his first trial, beginning on January 16, 1933, two young Black lawyers from the International Labor Defense — Benjamin J. Davis Jr. and John H. Geer — represented Herndon. This legal organization, affiliated with the Communist party, focused on defending workers and immigrants.
When Herndon took the stand, he directly addressed the jury, explaining the plight of the working class and justifying his actions. He argued that economic justice and a fair standard of living should be accessible to all, regardless of race, and that systemic inequalities that create disparities in wealth and income must be addressed to achieve true societal parity.
On January 18, 1933, the all-white jury found him guilty but did not impose the death penalty. Instead, they urged the court to show compassion, sentencing him to 18-20 years in a chain gang, a 2023 Atlanta Journal Constitution article recalled. After losing physical prisons in the Civil War, Georgia used chain gangs for correctional reform, forcing prisoners to work on state projects like railroad construction and sawmills. This method saved the state money by eliminating the need for new prisons.
In his manifesto, Herndon writes that he addressed the court at his sentencing, saying: "They can hold this Angelo Herndon and hundreds of others, but it will never stop these demonstrations on the part of Negro and white workers who demand a decent place to live in and proper food for their kids to eat.”
Herndon’s case wound through the court system for years, going before appeals judges, the state Supreme Court, and ultimately before the U.S. Supreme Court, which in April 1937 ruled in Herndon’s favor, declaring the law under which he was tried unconstitutional, finding it violated the 1st Amendment.
Upon his release, he changed his name to Eugene Braxton and continued working with the Party in various roles, supporting the poor and unemployed.
By the 1950s, he left the Party and moved to Chicago, living a quiet life as a salesman until his death on December 9, 1997.
