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North Carolina

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 North Carolina.

137Documented
2In custody
120Released
1Awaiting trial

Eras of repression in North Carolina

Where North Carolina’s entries fall across the census’s historical eras.

1970s 37 1930s 28 2010s 13 2020s 12 1920s 9 1960s 8

Documented cases

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

M
Mack Ingram
Released
Mack Ingram was a Black North Carolina farmer convicted of assault for allegedly leering at a white girl from...
R
Randolph Jennings
Black Panther Party member and one of the 'High Point 4,' who ran a Free Breakfast program targeted by the FBI...
J
J. Robert Jones
Released
J. Robert “Bob” Jones, the Grand Dragon of the North Carolina realm of the United Klans of America — which und...
R
Randolph Kilfoil
Released
Member ("King Paul") of the Greensboro chapter of the Almighty Latin King & Queen Nation and half-brother of c...
A
Avery Kimrey
Released
Avery Kimrey was one of the Burlington, North Carolina textile strikers framed in the 1934–35 "dynamite plot"...
R
Roderick Kirby
Released
Roderick Kirby was a member of the Black community in Wilmington, North Carolina who, seeing police harassing...
J
Joel Klimkewicz
Released
Private Joel Klimkewicz was a U.S. Marine who refused to train for combat after his conscientious-objector app...
R
Russell Knight
Released
Russell Knight, a striker held in an isolation cell after contracting smallpox in jail, was one of the sixteen...
S
Seth Laughlin
Seth W. Laughlin was a North Carolina man who, having become convinced of Friends' peace principles, joined th...
S
Simon C. Legain
Released
Simon C. Legain was a Quaker conscientious objector from North Carolina imprisoned during World War I. Court-m...
J
Justin Gray Liverman
Released
Justin Gray Liverman, known online as D3F4ULT, participated in Crackas With Attitude, a politically motivated...
B
Benny Long
Released
Benny Long was jailed in Winston-Salem, North Carolina after city police, led by Officer R.A. Spillman, forced...
J
John Lowery
Released
John Lowery was one of the Monroe, North Carolina defendants held on the kidnapping charge that arose from the...
H
Howard Norton Machtinger
Released
Bronx-born; cum laude Columbia 1966 (sociology); SDS regional director 1968. Co-author of the June 1969 Weathe...
J
James McCoy
One of the Wilmington Ten, convicted on trumped-up firebombing/conspiracy charges from the 1971 Wilmington, NC...
F
Fred McMahan
Released
Fred McMahan was a Gastonia-area United Textile Workers man sentenced to eighteen months on the Union County c...
B
Benjamin Merrill
Benjamin Merrill was a captain of the Rowan County militia and a leader of the Regulator movement — the backco...
G
George Moore
Released
George Moore was sentenced to death at Winston-Salem, North Carolina for stealing a pair of shoes worth less t...
L
Leon Moore
Released
Leon Moore was a nineteen-year-old textile striker sentenced to five to seven years for dynamiting a house dur...
C
Charlie Henry Newkirk
Released
Charlie Henry Newkirk was a conscientious objector from North Carolina imprisoned during World War I. Court-ma...
H
Howard Overman
Released
Howard Overman was one of the Burlington, North Carolina textile strikers framed in the 1934–35 "dynamite plot...
C
Charles Parker
Released
Charles Parker was a young civil rights and antiwar activist in Charlotte during an era when Black political o...
B
Boyd Payton
Released
Boyd Ellsworth Payton was a regional director of the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA), heading the unio...
A
A. E. Perry
Released
Dr. Albert E. Perry was vice-president of the Union County NAACP in Monroe, North Carolina, and a close ally o...

Institutions in North Carolina

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

North Carolina state courtsWilmington, North Carolina
10 cases
Gaston County JailGastonia, North Carolina
9 cases
North Carolina State Penitentiary (Central Prison)Raleigh, North Carolina
7 cases
Buncombe County Superior Court
5 cases
Federal Medical Center, ButnerButner, North Carolina
2 cases
North Carolina State Prison System
2 cases
FMC ButnerButner, North Carolina
2 cases
Seymour Johnson Air Force Base — Pax Christi-Spirit of Life Plowshares
2 cases