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Alabama

Political repression plays out state by state — shaped by local institutions, prosecutors, and movements for defense. These are the documented political prisoners and cases the census holds for Alabama.

283Documented
5In custody
166Released
3Awaiting trial

Eras of repression in Alabama

Where Alabama’s entries fall across the census’s historical eras.

1930s 177 1960s 39 1970s 26 2020s 11 1950s 10 1980s 4

Documented cases

283 entries in the census — every one stays in the record, whether the case is open or closed.

Edward Ellis
Released
Edward Ellis was one of the eleven Atmore-Holman Brothers — Alabama prisoners and active members of Inmates fo...
T. L. Fisher
Released
T. L. Fisher was a Birmingham movement minister and one of the eight petitioners in Walker v. The Rev. City o...
Joseph Gelders
Released
Joseph Sidney Gelders was a physicist, labor organizer, and civil-rights activist associated with the Southern...
Charles Gomillion
Released
Charles Goode Gomillion was a Tuskegee Institute professor and president of the Tuskegee Civic Association. In...
Eugene Hambrick
Released
Eugene Hambrick was one of five young Black men detained in the 1936 Huntsville, Alabama investigation into th...
Johnny Harris
Released
Johnny Harris was arrested on August 19, 1970. Johnny ‘Imani’ Harris was a desegregation activist who in 1970...
Audrey Faye Hendricks
Released
Audrey Faye Hendricks was nine years old when she was arrested in Birmingham on May 2, 1963, the first day of...
Tommy Lee Hines
Released
Tommy Lee Hines was a Black man with a severe intellectual disability living in Decatur, Alabama, when police...
Asbury Howard
Released
Asbury Howard was an international vice-president of the Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers Union and president of t...
Freeman A. Hrabowski III
Released
Freeman A. Hrabowski III participated in the Birmingham Children's Crusade in May 1963. As a child protester h...
Higinio Ochoa III
Released
Higinio Ochoa III (AKA w0rmer) is a hacker as part of the collective CabinCr3w (part of Anonymous). He was arr...
Clyde Johnson
Clyde Johnson was a Communist organizer reported held incommunicado and beaten. Kelley reports Communist orga...
Oscar Gamba Johnson
Released
Oscar Gamba Johnson was one of the Atmore-Holman Brothers (IFA), sentenced to 50 years in the framed prosecuti...
Ira Jolley
Released
Ira Jolley was one of five young Black men detained in the 1936 Huntsville, Alabama investigation into the kil...
Charles Joseph Jones
Released
Charles Joseph Jones — his name also appears as Joseph Charles Jones — was a founding SNCC activist arrested a...
James Jones
Released
James Jones, also known as Sekou Lumpen, was a former Inmates for Action member and a leader of the People’s C...
Martin Luther King Jr.
Released
Martin Luther King Jr. was a prominent civil rights leader who developed nonviolent civil disobedience techniq...
Sekou Kambui
Released
Sekou Kambui was a Civil Rights activist with the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), Congress for R...
Janice Wesley Kelsey
Released
Janice Wesley Kelsey joined the Birmingham Children's Crusade as an Ullman High School student. Arrested on Ma...
Mathew Kennedy
Released
Mathew Kennedy was a pensioned World War I veteran who drove in the Montgomery Improvement Association car poo...
Robert Edwin King
Released
Robert Edwin King was held for 2 documented days in custody. The Rev. R. Edwin King, a white theological stud...
Mamie King-Chalmers
Released
Mamie King-Chalmers was a civil-rights organizer who organized neighbors to join Birmingham's 1963 civil right...
Bernard Lafayette
Released
Bernard Lafayette Jr. was a co-founder of SNCC, a Nashville Student Movement organizer trained by James Lawson...
Richard Lake
Released
Richard Lake was held for 62 documented days in custody. Founder/leader of the Atmore-Holman prison group Inm...

Institutions in Alabama

Prisons, jails, and detention centers in Alabama that appear in the census’s case files.

Birmingham City JailBirmingham, Alabama
20 cases
Kilby PrisonMontgomery, Alabama
11 cases
Atmore State PrisonAtmore, Alabama
8 cases
Holman PrisonAtmore, Alabama
7 cases
Montgomery City JailMontgomery, Alabama
4 cases
Jefferson County Jail (Birmingham, Alabama)Birmingham, Alabama
4 cases
Montgomery County JailMontgomery, Alabama
3 cases
Etowah County JailGadsden, Alabama
1 case