The Great Sacramento Conspiracy Trial of 1935

In 1935, one of the most important trials in the history of the state began in Sacramento. The press called it the "great Sacramento Conspiracy Trial." Seventeen union organizers were accused of conspiring to commit "criminal syndicalism." In effect, they were put on trial for being communists. These unionists had recently led the largest farmworker strike in American history, involving 18,000 cotton pickers in the Central Valley. The union had won the strike, but now its leaders faced prison time. The trial featured three months of testimony by communists and growers, sheriffs and strikers, stool pigeons and vigilantes. Both sides believed that California was the victim of a conspiracy: either a “vicious, reactionary conspiracy to smash unionism,” in the opinion of the defendants; or a vicious, revolutionary conspiracy against America, in the view of the prosecutor.

This talk will tell the story of the trial and explain its implications for…