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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.
M
Miriam Stevenson
Released
Miriam Stevenson was a former union organizer held without bail on Terminal Island under the McCarran Act — on...
B
Barton Stone
Released
Barton Stone participated in the CNVA Everyman anti-nuclear voyage and was imprisoned at Santa Rita in 1962. H...
A
Awali Stoneham
Released
Awali Stoneham was listed as a New Afrikan / Black-liberation political prisoner, held at the Correctional Tra...
R
Robert P. Stover
Robert P. Stover, better known to friends and fellow workers as "Ed" Stover, was an Industrial Workers of the...
F
Fred Suttle
Released
Fred Suttle received a five- to ten-year prison sentence for violating the state's criminal syndicalism law be...
H
Harold Swanson
Released
Harold Swanson was a U.S. Army soldier and one of the "Presidio 27" — the stockade prisoners at the Presidio o...
A
Augustus Swift
Released
Augustus Swift was one of four Black Civilian Conservation Corps youths of the Cohasset camp near Chico, Calif...
G
Gus Swift
Released
Gus Swift appears in the National Civil Liberties Bureau's March 1919 compilation "War-Time Prosecutions and M...
J
Joshua Sykes
Released
Joshua Sykes, a pastor in the Church of the Living God from Berkeley, California, served a prison term in McNe...
A
Anne Symens-Bucher
Released
Lifelong Catholic Worker peace activist born in Oakland. Lived at the New York Catholic Worker with Dorothy Da...
F
Faraz Martin Talab
Released
Faraz Martin Talab was one of the eleven defendants in the San Diego County District Attorney's prosecution of...
O
Olga Talamante
Released
Olga Talamante was a Bay Area Chicana activist and University of California, Santa Cruz graduate who, while do...
C
Charles Talley
Released
One of six gay men arrested by undercover LAPD officers during the January 1, 1967 raid on the Black Cat Taver...
H
H. V. Taylor
Released
H. V. Taylor, an IWW member from Eureka, received a four-year prison sentence, which he served in San Quentin...
J
John C. Taylor
Released
John C. Taylor, a Communist Labor Party member from Oakland, received a one- to fourteen-year prison sentence,...
K
Kirk Taylor
Released
Kirk Taylor was a member of the San Francisco Black Caucus, arrested with co-chairman Larry Pinkney in 1972 wh...
R
R. V. Taylor
Released
R. V. Taylor was imprisoned at San Quentin State Prison during the era of California's criminal-syndicalism pr...
R
Robert Telles
Released
Mexican-American youth convicted of second-degree murder in the mass Sleepy Lagoon trial of January 1943, foll...
J
José Tellez
Released
Mexican-American youth nicknamed Smiling who was among the twelve defendants convicted in the January 1943 Sle...
G
G. J. Terrill
Released
G. J. Terrill was one of the Los Angeles Industrial Workers of the World defendants known as the "Twenty-Seven...
L
Louise Todd
Released
Louise Todd was a California Communist Party official sentenced in 1935 to one to fourteen years at the Tehach...
J
Jorge Torres
Released
Jorge Torres was a Spanish freelance videographer jailed while documenting Greenpeace’s 2001 Vandenberg anti-m...
F
Frank Travis
Released
Frank Travis was arrested in California and jailed awaiting trial in the Sacramento IWW case. He was held in t...
W
Warren Tucker
Released
Warren Tucker was one of the Black Panthers arrested after the May 2, 1967 demonstration at the California Sta...
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