Learn About Angelo Herndon.
Angelo Herndon, born outside Cincinnati in 1913, was an activist who fought for workers’ rights. Arrested and convicted of insurrection for organizing a peaceful march of Black and white workers in Atlanta, Georgia, the case reached the Supreme Court, which overturned the conviction in a landmark ruling affirming the right to organize and advocate for social change. Herndon married Joyce M. Chellis in 1938 and later lived in Chicago. Herndon’s fight for justice and equality continues to inspire activists.
Early Life
Eugene Angelo Braxton Herndon, born in 1913, grew up in a sharecropper family in Wyoming, Ohio, experiencing racism and poverty under Jim Crow laws. After the father’s death, financial hardships required the siblings to take on various jobs.
At thirteen, Herndon left home for dangerous, low-paying work in a Kentucky mine. In 1930, moved to Birmingham in search of better opportunities, where exposure to the Communist Manifesto led to joining the Young Communist League.
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Activism
Herndon became increasingly involved in the Communist Party, viewing it as the first organization encountered that was not racist. Aligning with the ideals, work began as an organizer for the Unemployment Council in Atlanta.
A deep commitment to social justice and workers’ rights led to leadership in a 1932 march for Atlanta’s Black and white unemployed workers. Shortly after, two Atlanta detectives made an arrest, bringing charges of attempted insurrection. A conviction resulted in a twenty-year prison sentence at nineteen years old, a case with far-reaching national implications.
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Herndon’s conviction. Herndon’s appeal was assisted by the International Labor Defense attorney Benjamin Davis, Jr., and a four-year publicity campaign led by well-known leaders such as C. Vann Woodward, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, and Whitney North Seymour, Sr.
The historic ruling affirmed that Herndon’s First Amendment rights violation had occurred. For the first time, the Supreme Court ruled against a state law specifically designed to suppress Black activism.
Herndon’s case showed how race-neutral legal strategies could combine race-conscious publicity strategies to unite diverse groups in mass protest. The case was also a landmark decision that united the struggle for civil rights and liberties, becoming a cornerstone of the civil rights movement. Lawyers and activists still cite it today as the rights of all people are fought for.
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Later Life
Following release from prison, Herndon continued the relentless dedication to the Communist Party and the civil rights movement. The Young Communist League elected him as the national head in 1937.
Herndon also co-founded the Negro Quarterly, with Ralph Ellison, in the 1940s. Contributors to the journal included Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Alain Locke, and W.E.B. DuBois.
By the mid-1940s, Herndon had become disillusioned with the Communist Party. He changed his name to Eugene Braxton and lived the rest of his life in Chicago. He only shared his revolutionary past with a few close friends and eventually passed away in 1997 at 84.
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