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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.
793Documented
19In custody
706Released
9Awaiting trial
Eras of repression in California
Where California’s entries fall across the census’s historical eras.
1910s 164
1970s 123
1930s 97
1960s 85
2000s 72
1950s 66
Documented cases
793 entries in the census — every one stays in the record, whether the case is open or closed.
B
Bernadette Doyle
Released
Bernadette Doyle was a California Communist Party leader — a perennial candidate who had once polled 600,000 v...
J
James Doyle
Released
James Doyle was jailed around December 1910 in the Fresno free-speech fight in California. He was released on...
R
Richard Drake
Released
Richard Drake was listed on the Labor Defender's class-war prisoner honor roll as serving 6 months in the Los...
C
C. A. Drew
Released
C. A. Drew, an IWW member from Susanville, received a four-year prison sentence, which he served in San Quenti...
R
Richard Duncan
Released
Richard Duncan was a U.S. Army soldier and one of the "Presidio 27" — the stockade prisoners at the Presidio o...
M
Mickey J. Dunn
Released
Mickey J. Dunn was an Oakland member of the Industrial Workers of the World convicted under California's Crimi...
M
Myra Dunton
Released
Myra Dunton appears in the National Civil Liberties Bureau's March 1919 compilation "War-Time Prosecutions and...
B
Bob Duren
Coordinator of the Southern California Black Panther Party chapter, subjected through 1977 to LAPD surveillanc...
M
Modesto Díaz
Released
Modesto Díaz was jailed in a criminal-libel prosecution connected to the Partido Liberal Mexicano press. Conte...
O
Omar J. Eaton
Released
Omar J. Eaton, an IWW member from Eureka, received a five-year prison sentence, which he served in San Quentin...
G
George E. Elstun
Released
George E. Elstun was a conscientious objector from California imprisoned during World War I. Court-martialed f...
M
Mitsuye Endo
Released
Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi was a Japanese-American clerk for the California Department of Motor Vehicles when she w...
E
Ernest Erickson
Released
Ernest Erickson, an IWW member from Los Angeles, received a four-year prison sentence, which he served in San...
P
Patrik Eriksson
Released
Patrik Eriksson was a Swedish Greenpeace participant jailed in California following the 2001 Vandenberg anti-m...
E
Elias Espinoza
Released
Elias Espinoza of Orange, California was a foreign-born radical arrested for deportation in a November 1953 Mc...
A
Andre Evans
Los Angeles man, brother of a 17-year-old fatally shot by LAPD officers, arrested and charged with conspiring...
H
Henry C. Evans
Henry C. Evans, recorded in contemporary sources as H. C. Evans and Henry Evans, was among the Industrial Work...
A
A. Feinberg
Released
A. Feinberg was listed among the class-war prisoners on the International Labor Defense's 1930 Winter Relief r...
G
Gregory Felix
Arrested by Oakland Police vice-squad officers in the NAACP office in connection with the Melvin Black police-...
J
Juan Fernandez
Released
Juan Fernandez was a member of La Casa de Carnalismo, a Chicano community organization in East Los Angeles tha...
M
Manuel Fernandez Rodriguez
Released
Manuel Fernandez Rodriguez was one of five Spanish sailors who deserted Franco's navy and sought asylum in the...
V
Vincent Ferrero
Released
Vincent Ferrero (Vincenzo Ferrero) was an Italian-born anarchist and restaurant worker in San Francisco who, w...
R
Renaye Fewless
Released
Renaye Fewless was a Los Angeles Catholic Worker intern who participated in a Rampart Police Station protest d...
F
Fred Firestone
Released
Fred Firestone was serving a sentence in a Los Angeles jail in 1931 for speaking at a factory-gate meeting.
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