Skip to content
Learn More → State by State

California

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 California.

769Documented
19In custody
682Released
9Awaiting trial

Eras of repression in California

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

1910s 164 1970s 121 1930s 97 1960s 80 1950s 66 2020s 61

Documented cases

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

Myron Sprague
Released
Myron Sprague was a laborer and a delegate of Local 573 of the Industrial Workers of the World's Construction...
Henry Steinberg
Released
LA Smith Act defendant; arrested August 1951; conviction reversed in Yates — SCOTUS held no evidence of conspi...
Herbert Stredwick
Released
Herbert Stredwick, a leader of the IWW's San Pedro, California, office and a Construction Workers and Marine T...
Yetta Stromberg
Released
Yetta Stromberg, a nineteen-year-old member of the Young Communist League, was a supervisor at a communist chi...
Herman Suhr
Released
Herman Suhr was an IWW organizer who, with Richard "Blackie" Ford, led the August 1913 hop-pickers' protest at...
Luis Talamantez
Released
Luis Bato Talamantez was one of the San Quentin Six prosecuted for the events of August 21, 1971 at San Quenti...
Willie Tate
Released
Willie Tate was one of the San Quentin Six prosecuted for the events of August 21, 1971 at San Quentin. He was...
Cole Asher Taylor-Martin
Released
Cole Asher Taylor-Martin, age 35, of Fullerton CA, Greenpeace 28 - September 2019 Houston Ship Channel bridge...
Fred W. Thompson
Released
Fred W. Thompson, an IWW member from Maryville, received a four-year prison sentence, which he served in San Q...
Grace Thorpe
Released
Grace Thorpe was a Sac and Fox Nation activist, World War II veteran (a WAC corporal who earned a Bronze Star...
Micah Tillmon
Released
Micah Tillmon is a West Hills, California man who was 19 years old when he was sentenced to 18 months in feder...
John Trudell
Released
John Trudell was a Santee Dakota poet, musician, and the spokesperson for the 1969–71 Indigenous occupation of...
Dalton Trumbo
Released
Dalton Trumbo, at the time one of the highest-paid screenwriters in Hollywood and the author of the antiwar no...
Watani Tyehimba
Released
Watani Tyehimba is a longtime activist of the New Afrikan Independence Movement and a founding member of the N...
Clayton Van Lydegraf
Released
Clayton Van Lydegraf was a longtime communist, labour and anti-imperialist organiser who had belonged to the C...
Roger Ver
Released
Roger Ver was a Libertarian political activist who ran for the California Statehouse on a platform of abolishi...
Antonio I. Villarreal
Released
Mexican revolutionary and Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) organizer who, with Ricardo Flores Magón and Librado...
Louis Vitale
Released
Father Louis Vitale OFM was an American Franciscan friar, U.S. Air Force veteran (he served as a pilot before...
Janye Waller
Released
Janye Waller is an outspoken young Black revolutionary from the San Francisco Bay Area. Janye was arrested in...
LaNada War Jack
Released
LaNada War Jack (born LaNada Vernae Boyer, 1947), Shoshone-Bannock of the Fort Hall Reservation, was the first...
Israel Weinberg
Released
Israel Weinberg was a San Francisco jitney driver and president of the Jitney Bus Operators' Union, indicted a...
Jack Weinberg
Released
Jack Weinberg was the Berkeley Free Speech Movement organizer whose October 1, 1964 arrest at a CORE table on...
Jeremy White
Released
Jeremy White was one of the eleven defendants in the San Diego County District Attorney's prosecution of anti-...
Charlotte Anita Whitney
Released
Charlotte Anita Whitney Wellesley-educated heiress (great-niece of Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field), so...

Institutions in California

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

San Quentin State PrisonSan Quentin, California
150 cases
Federal Bureau of Prisons
59 cases
San Quentin Rehabilitation CenterSan Quentin, California
23 cases
Presidio StockadeSan Francisco, California
22 cases
Los Angeles County JailLos Angeles, California
21 cases
Metropolitan Detention Center, Los AngelesLos Angeles, California
14 cases
San Francisco County JailSan Francisco, California
13 cases
Alameda County JailOakland, California
10 cases