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Pennsylvania

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 Pennsylvania.

420Documented
6In custody
371Released
2Awaiting trial

Eras of repression in Pennsylvania

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

1700s 77 1910s 73 1930s 63 2020s 41 1950s 36 1970s 30

Documented cases

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

Henry Brown
Released
Henry "Sha Sha" Brown was a member of the Black Liberation Army. Two weeks after the January 27, 1972 killing...
Anna Burlak
Released
Anna Burlak, an eighteen-year-old silk weaver known as "the Red Flame," was a leader of the National Textile W...
Pierce Butler
Released
Pierce Butler was a wealthy Philadelphia landowner and grandson of the Founding Father of the same name — infa...
Harry M. Clave
Released
Harry M. Clave was a conscientious objector from Pennsylvania imprisoned during World War I. Court-martialed f...
Alexander Cournos
Released
Alexander Cournos, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was convicted at the mass IWW trial in Chicago. He was sente...
Jordan Coyne
Released
Jordan Coyne, 25, threw rocks, bricks, pieces of concrete, and a tear gas canister at police officers and a po...
Talib Crump
Federal weapons-of-mass-destruction / dynamite ATM-bombing scheme during June 2020 Philadelphia unrest. Senten...
Edward Cummings
Released
Edward Cummings was a computer science expert who frequently spoke as a panelist for the WBAI radio show, "Off...
Sam Cutler
Released
Sam Cutler was a conscientious objector from Pennsylvania imprisoned during World War I. Court-martialed for r...
Vernell Dieudonne
Released
Vernell Dieudonne was a Lincoln University student arrested in 1950 for refusing segregated theater seating. H...
Edward F. Doree
Released
Edward F. Doree, secretary of the IWW Textile Workers Union in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was convicted at th...
Thomas Duffy
Thomas Duffy was convicted in connection with the July 1875 murder of Tamaqua policeman Benjamin F. Yost and h...
Taylor Breann Enterline
Released
Taylor Breann Enterline is a racial-justice protester arrested in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in September 2020 a...
Ben Fletcher
Released
Benjamin Harrison Fletcher was the most prominent African American organizer in the Industrial Workers of the...
Keith Forsyth
Released
Keith Forsyth, from Marion, Ohio, was the Camden group's skilled lock picker, twenty-two at the indictment. He...
Mugo Gatheru
Released
Mugo Gatheru was a Kenyan student at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, ordered deported under the Internal Sec...
Lewis J. Gergotz
Released
Lewis J. Gergotz was a conscientious objector from Pennsylvania imprisoned during World War I. Court-martialed...
Ralph Ginzburg
Released
Ralph Ginzburg was an Avant Garde writer and magazine publisher who famously published a documented collection...
Harry Gold
Released
Philadelphia industrial chemist who began passing Soviet intelligence economic and chemical secrets in 1934. A...
Joe Graber
Released
Joe Graber, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was convicted at the mass IWW trial in Chicago, sentenced to five...
Castner Hanway
Released
Defendant in the federal treason prosecution following the September 11, 1851 Christiana Resistance — an armed...
Mary Donovan Hapgood
Released
Mary Donovan Hapgood, a labor activist who had been a leading figure in the Sacco-Vanzetti defense, was arrest...
Powers Hapgood
Released
Powers Hapgood was a Harvard-educated coal miner, Socialist and labor organizer, who was arrested and jailed n...
Carolyn Hart
Released
Carolyn Hart was a twenty-two-year-old sentenced to two years at the Muncy women's reformatory in the McKeespo...

Institutions in Pennsylvania

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

Allegheny County WorkhouseBlawnox, Pennsylvania
23 cases
Walnut Street JailPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania
20 cases
Philadelphia GaolPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania
18 cases
Butler County PrisonButler, Pennsylvania
13 cases
FCI AllenwoodWhite Deer, Pennsylvania
12 cases
SCI DallasDallas, Pennsylvania
12 cases
Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas / SCI Pennsylvania state prisonsPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania
9 cases
Schuylkill County PrisonPottsville, Pennsylvania
9 cases