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Alabama

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 Alabama.

280Documented
5In custody
155Released
3Awaiting trial

Eras of repression in Alabama

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

1930s 176 1960s 36 1970s 26 2020s 11 1950s 11 1980s 4

Documented cases

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

R
Robert West
Robert West was jailed near Tuskegee with his son George. A March 1921 report alleges white farmers seized the...
A
Alfred White
Released
Alfred White was a Black sharecropper and Share Croppers' Union member wounded and arrested in the 19 December...
P
Pierce White
Released
Pierce White was a white farmer in the federal Rural Rehabilitation program at Lafayette, Chambers County, Ala...
J
Julia Wilder
Julia Wilder was a Black voting-rights organizer in Pickens County, Alabama, and president of the Pickens Coun...
F
Frank Williams (Birmingham organizer, 1930)
Frank Williams organized Birmingham’s Unemployment Council. Angelo Herndon recalls police raiding the council’...
L
Lewis Williams (Birmingham relief protest, 1933)
The June 22 report individually lists eight Black workers arrested during home raids after the Cotta-Seville c...
S
Saul Williams
Saul Williams was a Black worker in Bessemer, Alabama. A Bessemer dispatch dated February 1 in the Daily Worke...
S
Sol Williams
Black Bessemer militant Sol Williams was kidnapped from his bed on January 29, 1935 by men described in the ne...
A
Arthur Wilson
Released
Arthur Wilson was a conscientious objector from Alabama imprisoned during World War I. Court-martialed for ref...
J
Johnny Lee Wilson
Released
Johnny Lee Wilson was one of the eleven Atmore-Holman Brothers — Alabama prisoners and active members of Inmat...
N
Nora Wilson
Nora Wilson, a Black domestic worker, was imprisoned at Wetumpka in 1940 after defending her sister against a...
T
Tom Wilson (Communist district organizer)
Tom Wilson was a Communist Party district organizer in Birmingham. Herndon saw police handcuff and take him aw...
B
Ben Winston
Page 2's continuation of the Birmingham iron-ore strike report individually names Joe Evans, Ben Winston and W...
W
Willie Witcher
Released
Willie Witcher was a Share Croppers Union striker in Lowndes County, Alabama. He was shot and beaten on the Be...
C
Cornelius Wood
Cornelius Wood was an Alabama sharecropper imprisoned during the December 1932 repression of the Share Cropper...
E
Emmet Wood
Released
Emmet Wood was an Alabama sharecropper held in Macon County Jail at Tuskegee during the repression of the Shar...

Institutions in Alabama

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

Birmingham City JailBirmingham, Alabama
20 cases
Kilby PrisonMontgomery, Alabama
11 cases
Atmore State PrisonAtmore, Alabama
8 cases
Holman PrisonAtmore, Alabama
7 cases
Montgomery City JailMontgomery, Alabama
4 cases
Jefferson County Jail (Birmingham, Alabama)Birmingham, Alabama
4 cases
Montgomery County JailMontgomery, Alabama
3 cases
Etowah County JailGadsden, Alabama
1 case