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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.

R
Raymond Sumter
One of the 'Attica Brothers' whose kidnapping/unlawful-imprisonment charges from the 1971 rebellion were dropp...
M
Mtayari Sundiata
Released
Mtayari Shabaka Sundiata, born Samuel Smith, was a Black Liberation Army member who participated in the Octobe...
T
Tom Sung
Released
Tom Sung was a Chinese-American prosecuted in New York in 1954 under the Trading With the Enemy Act for sendin...
A
Alice J. Swartz
Released
Alice J. Swartz was jailed for the March 1969 Stony Brook University library protest against university war re...
P
Patricia Swinton
Released
Patricia "Pat" Swinton was a New Left radical charged in connection with a wave of bombings of corporate and g...
S
Samuel Sánchez
Released
Samuel Sánchez, a 28-year-old mental-health worker, was held in civil contempt on January 24, 1989 by Judge Eu...
M
Manuel Tarazona
Released
Manuel Tarazona was one of the 39 foreign-born radicals re-arrested when the Civil Rights Congress bail fund w...
R
Robert Taylor
Released
Black liberation activist charged as a New York 8+ defendant in the October 17-18, 1984 federal RICO indictmen...
A
Athos Terzani
Released
Athos Terzani was an anti-fascist worker framed in 1933 for the shooting of Anthony Fierro at a rally of the f...
T
Thiruthanikan Thanigasalam
Released
Sahilal Sarachandran, Nadarasa Yogarasa, Sathajhan Sarachandran, and Thiruthanikan Thanigasalam were involved...
P
Pratheepan Thavaraja
Released
Pratheepan Thavaraja, Nachimuthu Socrates, Murugesu Vinayagamoorthy, Vijayshanthar Patpanathan, Gaspar Raj Mar...
E
Evan Welling Thomas
Released
Evan Welling Thomas Younger brother of Norman Thomas; Princeton seminary student studying in Edinburgh when th...
M
Michelle Thomas
Released
Michelle Thomas was a Rutgers medical student and political activist involved with the Sunrise Collective. She...
R
Reginald Thomas
Released
Reginald Thomas was a former International Labor Defense organizer sent to Sing Sing prison on a two-to-four-y...
W
Walter Thomas
Released
One of the "Harlem Six" — Black teenagers arrested in May 1964 and charged with the murder of clothing-store o...
W
Willie Thomas
Released
Willie Thomas was a Black man held in Albany, New York in 1951 for extradition back to an Alabama chain gang,...
E
Eric Thompson
Released
Eric Thompson was one of the Attica Brothers — the prisoners the state of New York prosecuted after the Septem...
K
Kenneth Tierney
Released
Kenneth Tierney was one of the Fort Worth Five, five Irish-American men jailed in Texas in 1972 for refusing t...
S
Samuel Tilles
Released
Samuel Tilles was a conscientious objector from New York imprisoned during World War I. Court-martialed for re...
M
M. Tjader-Harris
Released
Mrs. M. Tjader-Harris was a leader of the Civil Defense Protest Committee arrested at City Hall Park in the Ap...
S
Silas Tompkins
Released
Silas Tompkins was one of the first Anti-Rent prisoners, prosecuted under New York's new law against appearing...
L
Lureida Torres
Released
Lureida Torres was a twenty-six-year-old New York City schoolteacher and a member of the Puerto Rican Socialis...
W
William Trajer
Released
William Trajer was a marine worker framed in New York in 1932 on a charge of "placing explosives in a vessel w...
J
Jeremy Trapp
Released
On July 17, 2020 Jeremy Trapp, 24, was observed by an informant and NYPD officers attempting to cut the brake...

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