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Illinois

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 Illinois.

326Documented
4In custody
302Released

Eras of repression in Illinois

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

1910s 66 1920s 38 1960s 37 1970s 30 1980s 25 1930s 22

Documented cases

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

Carl Haessler
Released
Carl Haessler was a Rhodes Scholar and University of Illinois philosophy professor who joined the Socialist Pa...
Edward Hamilton
Released
Edward Hamilton, from Chicago, Illinois, was convicted at the mass IWW trial in Chicago, sentenced to ten year...
Jason Hammond
Released
Jason Hammond is an antifascist who was accused of being connected to an anti-white supremacist action at a lo...
Jeremy Hammond
Released
Jeremy Hammond, also known by his online moniker sup_g, is an American anarchist activist and former computer...
Moses Harman
Released
Moses Harman was a free-thought and individualist-anarchist editor who published Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, a...
Clarence Hathaway
Released
Clarence Hathaway, a communist leader who would later edit the Daily Worker, was arrested in Chicago in Octobe...
Hippolyte Havel
Released
Hippolyte Havel was an anarchist held in the post-assassination anarchist roundup of September 1901. No prosec...
Tom Hayden
Released
Tom Hayden was a founder of Students for a Democratic Society and the principal author of its 1962 Port Huron...
Abbie Hoffman
Released
Abbie Hoffman was a co-founder of the Youth International Party ("Yippies") and one of the most flamboyant fig...
Edward Hoffmans
Released
Edward Charles Hoffmans — the surname really does end in s — was 31 at the time of the Chicago 15 action, livi...
John Hossack
Released
John Hossack was an Ottawa, Illinois grain merchant and Underground Railroad activist who had helped build the...
Clyde Hough
Released
Clyde Hough was an IWW activist associated with open defiance of World War I conscription. In 1917, he and oth...
George W. Howard
Released
American Railway Union director and Eugene V. Debs co-defendant in the federal contempt prosecution following...
Abraham Isaak
Released
Abraham Isaak was an anarchist publisher arrested and detained during the September 1901 roundup of anarchists...
Abraham Isaak Jr.
Released
Abraham Isaak Jr. was the son of the anarchist publisher Abraham Isaak. He was born in Russia and immigrated w...
Marie Isaak
Released
Marie (Mary) Isaak was the roughly sixteen-year-old daughter of the anarchist publishers Abraham and Mary Isaa...
Mary Isaak
Released
Mary Isaak was an anarchist arrested with Abe Isaak and other anarchists in September 1901 during the roundup...
John Gregory Jacobs
Released
John Gregory Jacobs, commonly known as “J.J.”, was a Students for a Democratic Society leader and a principal...
Gustave H. Jacobsen
Released
Gustave H. Jacobsen of Chicago was convicted in a 1917-1918 federal World War I-era prosecution and pictured i...
Mary Harris Jones
Released
Mary Harris Jones Mary G. Harris Jones — known the world over as "Mother" Jones — was an Irish-born American l...
Vanda Kaleto
Released
Vanda Kaleto was a Chicago garment-strike picket associated with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Un...
Mike Karadich
Released
Mike Karadich was one of the eight miners convicted in March 1926 in the "Zeigler frame-up" — the prosecution...
Ludwig E. Katterfeld
Released
Ludwig E. Katterfeld was convicted under the Illinois criminal syndicalism law and received a one- to five-yea...
Sylvester Keliher
Released
American Railway Union director and Eugene V. Debs co-defendant in the federal contempt prosecution following...

Institutions in Illinois

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

Cook County JailChicago, Illinois
34 cases
MCC ChicagoChicago , Illinois
12 cases
Southern Illinois Penitentiary, ChesterChester, Illinois
7 cases
FCI Pekin Satellite CampPekin, Illinois
5 cases
USP MarionMarion, Illinois
5 cases
Woodstock Jail (McHenry County)
5 cases
FCI PekinPekin, Illinois
4 cases
Stateville Correctional CenterCrest Hill, Illinois
4 cases