Oct. 24, 1949: 74 years ago, Oct 24 1949, two workers at Oakland's Rose-Waterman Drug [...]

74 years ago, Oct 24 1949, two workers at Oakland’s Rose-Waterman Drug Store were murdered. The killings were pinned on Black teenager Jerry Newson, who was sentenced to death. The verdict was reversed after a campaign by the Communist Party’s East Bay Civil Rights Congress

Newson, who worked at a shoeshine stand, lived in West Oakland’s Harbor Homes housing project, a nearly all-Black community that had been built to house workers during World War II. A week before the murders, he had robbed Harbor Homes’ office with his Uncle James’ empty pistol

Oakland cops arrested Newson for the Harbor Homes robbery, to which he immediately confessed. Police then announced that Newson was being held as the chief suspect in the unrelated drug store murders, despite a near-total lack of evidence, falsely claiming that he had confessed

Newson was charged with the murders. Witnesses who had seen him elsewhere on the night in question were harassed and rounded up by police; one was held in jail without charge for three days. In June, Newson was found guilty and sentenced to death

The Civil Rights Congress organized an aggressive, community-based defense of Newson. They provided lawyers free of charge, ran countless stories about Newson on their KTIM radio show “Civil Rights in the News,” and distributed thousands of copies of a pamphlet on Newson

The CRC’s defense committee mobilized hundreds of volunteers in West Oakland, “especially Negro women,” and money and volunteers poured in from the Bay Area’s progressive unions, particularly the ILWU and the staunchly anti-racist Marine Cooks & Stewards Union

In San Quentin, Newson participated in a sit-down strike of death row inmates led by Wesley Robert Wells. Wells (who had initially been jailed for stealing a car battery, but found himself on death row after throwing a spit bucket a guard) was also saved from execution by the CRC

Eventually, the Civil Rights Congress fought the case all the way up to the Supreme Court, where the execution verdict was reversed. Despite this, Newson was still forced to serve a 15 year sentence for armed robbery (a typical sentence being 2-3 years)