Biography
At 36 the oldest of the eight Flower City Conspiracy defendants, from Philadelphia. Arrested Sept 6, 1970 in the Rochester raids; convicted and sentenced to twenty to thirty months.
The September 1, 1972 journal names Nicholson as another participant in the Earle/Leonardo protest group and says her case was being handled separately from the fourteen people appealing two-hundred-fifty-dollar fines. This is a separately reported legal proceeding, not a new date, outcome or precise custody interval inferred from the group account. Source: https://friendsjournal.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/friendsjournal/wp-content/uploads/emember/downloads/1972/HC12-50522.5.pdf#page=2
The September 1, 1971 Sufferings roster places this prisoner at Alderson Federal Womens Reformatory, West Virginia and identifies affiliation with Media Meeting, Pennsylvania (attender). The roster confirms confinement at its reporting time without establishing an exact admission, transfer or release day, a new case, or a complete actual duration. Source: https://friendsjournal.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/friendsjournal/wp-content/uploads/emember/downloads/1971/HC12-50503.pdf#page=31
The March 1, 1972 Sufferings notice states that Joan Nicholson had been released by its reporting time. It gives no exact discharge day or complete custody duration; the adjacent reimprisonment concerns would-be visitors Ralph Squire and Suzanne Williams, not a new admission for Nicholson. Source: https://friendsjournal.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/friendsjournal/wp-content/uploads/emember/downloads/1972/HC12-50514.pdf#page=34
The contemporary Friends Journal account describes Nicholson as a former kindergarten teacher from a Philadelphia Quaker family who undertook graduate study in Vienna, Edinburgh and Berlin. She took part in an American Friends Service Committee mission sending medical supplies to Vietnam through Canada. By February 1971 she was confined at the federal women's institution in Alderson, West Virginia.
Original document 1234, PDF page 20; Original document 1234, PDF page 23.
After joining the Alderson women prisoners’ rights strike following the Attica uprising, Nicholson was transferred to disciplinary segregation at Ashland, Kentucky.
