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Massachusetts

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 Massachusetts.

343Documented
1In custody
203Released
3Awaiting trial

Eras of repression in Massachusetts

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

1930s 103 1920s 40 1800s 32 1970s 30 1980s 27 1910s 27

Documented cases

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

Joseph Cort
Released
Joseph Cort was a Massachusetts-born physician and research physiologist who had belonged to the Communist Par...
Antonio da Costa
Released
Antonio da Costa was one of three Portuguese mill workers and A Luta anarchist editors arrested at Fall River....
Frances Crowe
Released
Frances Crowe was an American Quaker, longtime Western Massachusetts peace and anti-nuclear-power organizer, a...
Charles G. Davis
Released
Charles G. Davis was a Massachusetts abolitionist attorney and Boston Vigilance Committee member, prosecuted b...
Bobby Dellelo
Released
Bobby Dellelo was arrested on November 6, 1963. Massachusetts prisoner-organizer and chapter president of the...
Lawrence Dennis
Released
Lawrence Dennis was a former American diplomat, financial commentator, and author who advocated an American fo...
Pat Devine
Released
Pat Devine was born in Motherwell, Scotland, and became a Communist and trade-union organizer. After emigratin...
Julia Dupuis
Awaiting Trial
Julia Dupuis was arrested in Cartersville, Georgia, on April 28, 2023 with Caroline “Charley” Tennenbaum and A...
Joseph Ettor
Released
Joseph Ettor was an Italian-American IWW organizer who, with Arturo Giovannitti, led the 1912 Bread and Roses...
Tess Ewing
Released
Tess Ewing was a Boston school-bus driver and member of the United Steelworkers (USWA) who was jailed for cont...
Stephen S. Foster
Released
Stephen S. Foster was a radical abolitionist and nonresistant — a "come-outer" who repeatedly rose in New Engl...
Wendell Furry
Released
Wendell Furry was a Harvard University physicist cited for contempt of Congress after refusing, on constitutio...
Luigi Galleani
Released
Luigi Galleani was the leading insurrectionary anarchist theorist among Italian immigrants in early 20th-centu...
William Lloyd Garrison
Released
William Lloyd Garrison was the foremost American abolitionist — founder of the newspaper The Liberator and a l...
William "Lefty" Gilday
Released
William “Lefty” Gilday was an anti-war activist who died as an incarcerated elder for his role in revolutionar...
Arturo Giovannitti
Released
Arturo Giovannitti was an Italian-American radical poet, editor of Il Proletario, and IWW organizer who co-led...
Marty Gottesfeld
Released
Marty Gottesfeld (sometimes styled “Martin Gottesfeld”) is an American activist and computer engineer known fo...
Frank "Parky" Grace
Released
Frank "Parky" Grace was a New Bedford Panther organizer and Vietnam veteran. Convicted in the Marvin Morgan mu...
Philip Grosser
Released
Philip Grosser was born in Slavuta, Ukraine; established anarchist activist in Boston by 1917; among the first...
Anna Gyorgy
Released
Anna was a Montague Farm activist who in 1974 helped organize the Alternative Energy Coalition in Montague, Ma...
Maurice Hyman Halperin
In Exile
Maurice Hyman Halperin was a scholar, former State Department and Office of Strategic Services official, and B...
Edward Hasbrouck
Released
Edward was born Jan. 11, 1960 in Cambridge, MA, refused to register in 1980, returned to Massachusetts, and wa...
Lewis Hayden
Released
Lewis Hayden was a Black abolitionist, former enslaved person, Boston Vigilance Committee leader, and Undergro...
Ezra Heywood
Released
Ezra Heywood was an American anarchist, abolitionist and early suffragist who advocated for equal rights for w...

Institutions in Massachusetts

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

Fort WarrenBoston, Massachusetts
75 cases
Norfolk County Jail Dedham, Massachusetts
10 cases
Boston Court House
3 cases
Charlestown State PrisonBoston, Massachusetts
2 cases
Deer Island PrisonBoston, Massachusetts
2 cases
Boston JailBoston, Massachusetts
2 cases
Hampshire County Jail (Northampton)Northampton, Massachusetts
1 case
Salem, MA federal jailSalem, Massachusetts
1 case