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New York

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 New York.

859Documented
24In custody
787Released
2Awaiting trial

Eras of repression in New York

Where New York’s entries fall across the census’s historical eras.

1950s 137 1910s 137 1970s 87 1960s 87 1980s 81 1930s 65

Documented cases

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

Vincent Buccafori
Released
Vincent Buccafori was an Italian immigrant shoe-worker in Brooklyn, New York who in 1911 killed his foreman in...
Marilyn Buck
Released
Marilyn Buck was a Texas-born, white anti-imperialist revolutionary, the only white member of the Black Libera...
Safiya Bukhari
Released
Safiya Bukhari, born Bernice Jones in The Bronx in 1950, was a member of the New York chapter of the Black Pan...
Daniel Burns
Released
Daniel Burns was one of the St. Patrick's Four — Catholic Worker activists Peter DeMott, Teresa Grady, Clare G...
Ethel Byrne
Released
Ethel Byrne was a registered nurse and one of the three principal operators of the Brownsville birth-control c...
Harold I. Cammer
Released
Harold I. Cammer was a New York labor attorney held in contempt of court for his conduct in defending the fur-...
David Campbell
Released
David Campbell is being unjustly imprisoned for events that unfolded at the protest of a New York City alt-rig...
Angelo Cappelo
Released
Angelo Cappelo was one of the Buffalo, New York workers jailed in 1930 for demanding "work or wages" in the un...
Elaine Carberry
Released
Elaine Carberry, 36, with Corey Smith set fire to an NYPD Homeless Outreach van on July 15, 2020 in NYC. Charg...
Edward S. Carey
Released
Edward S. Carey, from New York, New York, was convicted at the mass IWW trial in Sacramento and sentenced to f...
Stokely Carmichael
Released
Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture) was a Trinidadian-American civil rights organizer who became chairman of...
Arthur Caron
Released
Arthur Caron was a French-Canadian-born anarchist and member of the Industrial Workers of the World. Born on D...
Donato Carrillo
Released
Donato Carrillo, born in Sant'Agata di Puglia, Foggia, Italy (his Italian political-police file names his pare...
George Blake Charney
Released
George Blake Charney was a New York labor lawyer and a leading Communist Party USA figure in the postwar perio...
Marjorie Chodorov
Released
Marjorie Chodorov was an executive-board member of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee (JAFRC), which aid...
Judith Clark
Released
Judith Alice Clark was a former Weather Underground organizer and one of the four May 19th Communist Organizat...
Moana Cole
Released
Moana Cole is a New Zealand peace activist and one of the four Catholic Worker members of the ANZUS (Australia...
Rosa Cortez Collazo
Released
Puerto Rican independence activist and wife of Oscar Collazo, one of the two Puerto Rican Nationalist Party me...
Robert Collier
Released
Robert Steele Collier was a longtime Harlem-based revolutionary and one of the New York Panther 21. He had bee...
Tom Cornell
Released
Thomas Charles Cornell was an American pacifist organizer, ordained Catholic deacon, longtime member of the Ca...
Ida Craddock
Released
Ida C. Craddock was an American sex educator, freethinker, and advocate of marriage reform who wrote frank ins...
George Crockett
Released
George W. Crockett Jr. was one of the defense attorneys in the 1949 Foley Square Smith Act trial of the eleven...
María Cueto
Released
María Cueto was the director of the National Commission on Hispanic Affairs of the Episcopal Church and a well...
Leon Czolgosz
Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, was arrested on September 6, 1901 for assassinating President William McKinley in...

Institutions in New York

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

Ellis Island Immigration StationNew York, New York
184 cases
Manhattan House of Detention (the Tombs)New York, New York
17 cases
Sing Sing Correctional FacilityOssining, New York
14 cases
Attica Correctional FacilityAttica, New York
13 cases
Metropolitan Correctional CenterNew York, New York
11 cases
MDC BrooklynBrooklyn, New York
9 cases
Metropolitan Correctional Center, New YorkNew York, New York
9 cases
Blackwell's Island PenitentiaryNew York, New York
8 cases