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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.
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.
Ed Frey
Released
Ed Fey was an attorney who in 2010 slept on the steps outside the Santa Cruz City Hall in protest of a recent...
Inez García
Released
Inez García was a young Latina woman who became a landmark figure in the women's self-defense movement after s...
Keith Gartenlaub
Released
Keith Gartenlaub was a senior engineer with Boeing who was targeted by the FBI in a Chinese espionage investig...
John Golden
Released
John Golden, an IWW member from Eureka, received a one- to fourteen-year prison sentence, which he served in S...
Robert Goldstein
Released
Robert Goldstein, of Los Angeles, California, was sentenced to ten years in prison. He served in McNeil Island...
Ralph Goodwin
In Exile
Ralph Goodwin was a member of the Republic of New Afrika who, with Charlie Hill and Michael Finney, fled to Cu...
Ernest Graham
Released
One of the 'San Quentin Two,' convicted along with Eugene Allen of killing a guard at the Deuel Vocational Ins...
John Grave
Released
John Grave, a laborer from Sacramento, California, was convicted at the mass IWW trial in Sacramento and sente...
Harry Gray
Released
Harry Gray, a leader of the Agricultural Workers Industrial Union in Sacramento, California, was convicted at...
Lázaro Gutiérrez de Lara
Released
Lázaro Gutiérrez de Lara was jailed beginning September 27, 1907, in California and released after 104 days, a...
Vincent Hallinan
Released
Vincent Hallinan was a combative San Francisco trial lawyer who defended longshore leader Harry Bridges in his...
Sami Hamdi
Released
Sami Hamdi is a British political commentator and journalist of Tunisian and Algerian descent, managing direct...
Sharla Hampton
Sharla Hampton was jailed on August 1, 1969 while distributing the Panther newspaper near San Francisco’s bus...
David Harris
Released
David Harris emerged as a leading figure in draft resistance and antiwar organizing, arguing that conscription...
Emily Harris
Released
Born in Baltimore and raised in Clarendon Hills, Illinois, the daughter of an engineer, Emily Schwartz earned...
David Hartsough
Released
Quaker organizer and longtime AFSC director of the Nonviolent Movement Building Program. Helped form both the...
Dorothy Ray Healey
Released
Dorothy Ray Healey was the best-known Communist organizer in Southern California, a veteran of the 1930s farm-...
Patty Hearst
Released
Patricia Campbell Hearst, granddaughter of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped from her B...
Bessie Herman
Released
Bessie Herman was arrested and clubbed leading a 1930 Oakland, California City Hall demonstration protesting p...
Eduardo Herrera
Released
Eduardo Herrera, a Mexican agricultural worker who had first been held for deportation before being sent to pr...
David Hilliard
Released
Chief of Staff of the Black Panther Party during its peak years. Hilliard was prosecuted under federal law for...
Willie Roger Holder
Released
Willie Roger Holder was a Black Panther and Vietnam veteran who went AWOL after being seriously wounded by a l...
William Hood
Released
William Hood, a painter from San Francisco, California, was convicted at the mass IWW trial in Sacramento and...
Tetsuji Horiuchi
Released
Tetsuji Horiuchi, a Trade Union Unity League organizer and leader of Japanese workers in the Imperial Valley f...
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