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Colorado

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 Colorado.

91Documented
3In custody
83Released

Eras of repression in Colorado

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

1950s 18 1910s 11 1980s 10 1970s 9 1930s 8 2020s 7

Documented cases

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

M
Maia Scherrer
Released
Maia Scherrer was a Denver Communist and secretary of the Colorado defense committee, arrested under the Smith...
A
Albert Skinner
Released
Albert Skinner was one of nine present and former leaders of the independent International Union of Mine, Mill...
K
Kyle Snyder
In Exile
Kyle Snyder, born September 12, 1983 and raised partly in foster care in Colorado, enlisted in the United Stat...
P
Pam Solo
Released
Born in Englewood, Colorado, a Sister of Loretto and graduate of Loretto Heights College (1969) and Goddard Co...
M
Mary Sprunger-Froese
Released
Mary Sprunger-Froese, with her husband Peter, has lived since 1979 at the Bijou Community, an intentional fait...
G
George StillDay
Released
Native American prisoner held at the Limon Correctional Facility in Colorado under inmate number 85775, identi...
K
Kristen Svanum
Released
Kristen Svanum was a Danish-born Industrial Workers of the World organizer, secretary-treasurer of the IWW's C...
M
Maurice E. Travis
Released
CPUSA member who became secretary-treasurer and then president (1947) of the International Union of Mine, Mill...
J
Jesse Van Camp
Released
Jesse Van Camp was one of nine leaders of the Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers Union convicted in Denver in Decemb...
M
Mario Vasquez
Released
Chicano activist associated with the Crusade for Justice in Denver, arrested following the 1973 confrontation...
R
Roy Vigil
Released
Roy Vigil was an eighteen-year-old Spanish-speaking sugar-beet worker sentenced to death near Brighton, in Ada...
E
Elmer Wagner
Released
Elmer Wagner was a Jehovah's Witnesses conscientious objector from Colorado imprisoned during World War I. Cou...
A
Anne Waldman
Released
Poet, co-founder with Allen Ginsberg of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa, was active i...
N
Nancy Wertheimer
Released
Nancy Wertheimer was among the Colorado Communists jailed for contempt in Denver in 1948 for refusing to coope...
C
Charles Wilson
Released
Charles Wilson was one of nine present and former Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers Union leaders convicted in Denv...
P
Peter Wukusick
Released
Peter Wukusick, an IWW member from Sacramento, received a three-year prison sentence, which he served in San Q...
L
Louis Zancanelli
Released
Italian-American striking coal miner during the 1913-14 Colorado Coalfield War — a year of armed conflict betw...
H
Harold Zepelin
Released
Harold Zepelin was a Denver-born Communist arrested under the Smith Act in August 1954 during the McCarthy era...
A
Al Zook
Released
Al Zook was a father and grandfather active in the Denver Catholic Worker community in Colorado at the time of...

Institutions in Colorado

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

ADX FlorenceFlorence, Colorado
3 cases
FDC EnglewoodLittleton, Colorado
3 cases
Colorado State PenitentiaryCañon City, Colorado
3 cases
Jefferson County Jail
3 cases
Mount San Rafael Hospital / Trinidad jail (militia custody)Trinidad, Colorado
1 case
Denver County JailDenver, Colorado
1 case
Colorado Department of Corrections
1 case
Limon Correctional FacilityLimon, Colorado
1 case