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.

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.

A
Alex Nicholson
Released
Alex Nicholson, an IWW member from Eureka, received a four-year prison sentence, which he served in San Quenti...
J
James Nolan
Released
James Nolan was arrested in California and jailed while awaiting trial in the Sacramento IWW case. He was held...
L
Lorine Norman
Released
Lorine Norman was a CAWIU organizer, one of the eighteen indicted at Sacramento in July 1934 for criminal synd...
F
Frank Nubin
Released
Frank Nubin was a 46-year-old Oakland, California steelworker — married, studying structural engineering — who...
D
Daniel O'Connell
Released
Daniel O'Connell, an attorney, a Socialist and an Irish Nationalist from San Francisco, was convicted of givin...
J
Jenny O'Connell-Nowain
Released
Jenny O'Connell-Nowain is a 41-year-old former preschool teacher from Redding, California with no prior crimin...
T
Thomas O'Mara
Released
Thomas O'Mara, an IWW member from Sacramento, received a four-year sentence for giving testimony in court on b...
R
Richard O'Neal
O’Neal was a former Black Panther connected to Bay Area political organizing who became entangled in the reviv...
J
James D. O'Neil
Released
James D. O'Neil was a former West Coast CIO publicity director jailed for contempt during the 1941 Harry Bridg...
J
Joe O'Sullivan
Released
Joe O'Sullivan was a business agent for the Carpenters union in San Francisco during the 1976 strike by city c...
M
Maurice Ogden
Released
Maurice Ogden, a Los Angeles-area writer, was indicted in 1959 under a federal false-statements law (18 U.S.C....
R
Ruchelle Ogden
Released
Ruchelle Ogden was one of the eleven defendants in the San Diego County District Attorney's prosecution of ant...
J
James Olson
Released
James Olson, an IWW member from Los Angeles, received a one- to fourteen-year prison sentence, which he served...
J
John Orlando
Released
John Orlando, an IWW member from Sacramento, received a four-year prison sentence, which he served in San Quen...
A
Alberto Ortiz
Released
Alberto Ortiz was a member of La Casa de Carnalismo, a Chicano community organization in East Los Angeles that...
L
Louis Osczepinski
Released
Louis Osczepinski, then 21, was a U.S. Army soldier and one of the "Presidio 27" — the stockade prisoners at t...
E
Eddie Page
A Black Marine private, the Pendleton 14 defendant given the harshest sentence after an August 1977 court-mart...
E
Ernest Palmer
Released
Ernest Palmer was one of six young workers, one of the six young demonstrators, who leapt the railing at the c...
P
Peter Panagopoulos
Released
Peter Panagopoulos was a Greek worker and bookseller arrested in a Red Squad raid on a Long Beach, California...
S
Sang Ryun Park
Released
Sang Ryun Park was the English-language editor of the Los Angeles Korean-American paper Korean Independence, a...
S
Sang Ryup Park
Released
Sang Ryup Park was an editor of the Los Angeles Korean Independence News, a newspaper favoring a unified, inde...
J
Jim Parkhurst
Released
Jim Parkhurst was a Los Angeles Catholic Worker who participated in the Ash Wednesday March 5, 2003 blockade o...
J
Joyce Parkhurst
Released
Joyce Parkhurst was a Los Angeles Catholic Worker who participated in the Ash Wednesday March 5, 2003 blockade...
C
Carl Patterson
Released
Carl Patterson was the chief leader of the UCAPAWA cotton pickers' strike in California's San Joaquin Valley i...

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