[4] In addition to her work in advocacy and journalism, Jemison's responsibility to support her mother and her two children led her to take jobs at various times as a beautician, salesperson, factory worker, clerk, peddler, dressmaker, and theater usher.
Local authorities charged two Iroquois women with the crime, including one of Marchand's models, Lila Jimerson, as well as her friend Nancy Bowen.
Jemison defended these women when the District Attorney, Guy Moore, called the murder an "Indian" crime and conducted warrantless searches of Seneca and Cayuga homes.
[3][8] During these years, Jemison conducted legal research, wrote newspaper articles, campaigned for the Six Nations' candidate, and lobbied against the Indian Reorganization Act.
[13] Following this principle, she also fought the federal government's plans to subject the Seneca to the Selective Service Act of 1940 as U.S. citizens, insisting that such authority belonged to the Iroquois Confederacy.
[14] Jemison also protested when Roosevelt vetoed the Beiter Bill[a] in June 1935, which would have "restored tribal jurisdiction over fishing and hunting on [Seneca] reservations which had been taken away by the government in the Conservation Act of 1927."
He responded to Jemison's allegations by giving the press copies of a letter from an anti-Semitic organization, James True Associates, soliciting funds for the AIF.
At the same time, Collier said that the organization Jemison represented was a "trouble-making pro-Nazi racket" trying to engage nationwide Indigenous support for legislation that would enrich only its own members.
For example, Jemison claimed that Native people were being controlled by a group of federal officials "who have well-known regard for radical activities and association with, or admiration for, atheists, anarchists, communists, and other 'fifth columnists'".
[20] In January 1939, at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee considering the nomination of Felix Frankfurter to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, Jemison testified in opposition along with a number of anti-Semitic and nativist witnesses, opponents of the ACLU, and anti-Communist conspiracy theorists.
"Its report noted this referred to the 1934 Act, which established tribal deeds because the earlier distribution of allotments had "resulted in the Indians selling much of their land to whites".