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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.
124Documented
2In custody
103Released
Eras of repression in Alabama
Where Alabama’s entries fall across the census’s historical eras.
1930s 45
1970s 27
1960s 26
1950s 11
2020s 3
1910s 3
Documented cases
124 entries in the census — every one stays in the record, whether the case is open or closed.
A
Anthony Paradise
Released
Anthony Paradise was one of the eleven Atmore-Holman Brothers — Alabama prisoners and active members of Inmate...
W
W. C. Patton
Released
W. C. Patton was an official of the Alabama State Coordinating Association for Registration and Voting. In 195...
W
Willie Peterson
Released
Willie Peterson was a tubercular Black World War veteran of Birmingham, Alabama framed in 1931 on charges of m...
J
J. S. Phifer
Released
The Rev. J. S. Phifer was an associate of Fred Shuttlesworth in the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Right...
G
George Porter
Released
George Porter was a jailed leader of Mine-Mill Local 137 in the 1937 Thomas Furnace (Republic Steel) strike at...
J
John Thomas Porter
Released
The Rev. John Thomas Porter, pastor of Sixth Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham and once an assistant to Mart...
H
Harold Ralston
Released
Harold Ralston was an Alabama Communist Party organizer and one of six Communists tried on vagrancy charges be...
A
Andy Riendeau
Andy J. Riendeau, known as "John Two Names," is a longtime Native American activist whom the Anarchist Black C...
I
Ike Robinson
Released
Ike Robinson was an American Federation of Labor organizer, one of ten arrested at Russellville, Alabama durin...
E
Ed Sears
Released
Ed Sears was sentenced to ten months in Birmingham, Alabama in 1935 for possessing ILD pamphlets, under the ci...
R
Robert Shelton
Released
Robert Shelton, the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America — then the largest Klan organization in the...
P
Patricia Ann Shuttlesworth
Released
Patricia Ann Shuttlesworth, a teenage daughter of the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, was hauled off a Greyhound bus...
R
Ruby Fredericka Shuttlesworth
Released
Ruby Fredericka Shuttlesworth, a daughter of the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, was arrested and jailed with her sis...
F
Fred Shuttlesworth Jr.
Released
Fred Shuttlesworth Jr., the young son of the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, was hauled off a Greyhound bus and jaile...
J
Judson Simpson
Released
Judson Simpson was a Black sharecropper and Share Croppers' Union member wounded and arrested in the 19 Decemb...
L
Laura Stark
Released
Laura Stark was arrested in May 1934 in the police raid on the International Labor Defense office in Birmingha...
L
L. C. Tate
Released
L. C. Tate was a jailed leader of Mine-Mill Local 137 in the 1937 Thomas Furnace (Republic Steel) strike at Bi...
W
Wirt Taylor
Released
Wirt Taylor was an Unemployed Council organizer in Birmingham, Alabama sentenced in 1933 to six months at hard...
D
Donald Thigpen
Alabama prisoner who faced a March 10, 1978 execution date alongside Johnny Imani Harris; at Harris's request...
P
Pete Turney
Released
Pete Turney was a Black worker of Birmingham, Alabama convicted of "criminal libel" for carrying a leaflet tha...
R
Robert Washington
Released
Robert Washington was a Black leader in Selma, Alabama, jailed for four days in 1935 on a pretextual 'aggravat...
H
Homer Welch
Released
Homer Welch was a textile-union organizer in Alabama who in 1936 was convicted by a jury and sentenced to ten...
A
Alfred White
Released
Alfred White was a Black sharecropper and Share Croppers' Union member wounded and arrested in the 19 December...
P
Pierce White
Released
Pierce White was a white sharecropper of Lafayette, Chambers County, Alabama, sentenced around 1935–36 to six...
Institutions in Alabama
Prisons, jails, and detention centers in Alabama that appear in the census’s case files.
Birmingham City JailBirmingham, Alabama
19 cases
Kilby PrisonMontgomery, Alabama
11 cases
Holman PrisonAtmore, Alabama
9 cases
Atmore State PrisonAtmore, Alabama
7 cases
Montgomery City JailMontgomery, Alabama
4 cases
Montgomery County JailMontgomery, Alabama
3 cases
FCI TalladegaTalladega, Alabama
2 cases
Etowah County JailGadsden, Alabama
1 case