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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.

130Documented
2In custody
109Released

Eras of repression in Alabama

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

1930s 45 1960s 32 1970s 27 1950s 11 2020s 3 1910s 3

Documented cases

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

B
Bill Morgan
Released
Bill Morgan was a farmer from Greenville, Alabama, one of many people convicted and imprisoned under the feder...
R
Richard Morrisroe
Released
Richard Morrisroe was a Chicago priest and Catholic Interracial Council member. He survived a shooting shortly...
C
Clinton Moss
Released
Clinton Moss was a Black sharecropper and Share Croppers' Union member wounded and arrested in the 19 December...
S
Sam Moss
Released
Sam Moss was a Black sharecropper and Share Croppers' Union member wounded and arrested in the 19 December 193...
T
Tarik Nkrumah
Released
Born George Matthews of Birmingham. RNA citizen present at the Lewis Street raid. Convicted; served prison tim...
A
Anthony Paradise
Released
Anthony Paradise was one of the eleven Atmore-Holman Brothers — Alabama prisoners and active members of Inmate...
W
W. C. Patton
Released
W. C. Patton was an official of the Alabama State Coordinating Association for Registration and Voting. In 195...
W
Willie Peterson
Released
Willie Peterson was a tubercular Black World War veteran of Birmingham, Alabama framed in 1931 on charges of m...
J
J. S. Phifer
Released
The Rev. J. S. Phifer was an associate of Fred Shuttlesworth in the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Right...
G
George Porter
Released
George Porter was a jailed leader of Mine-Mill Local 137 in the 1937 Thomas Furnace (Republic Steel) strike at...
J
John Thomas Porter
Released
The Rev. John Thomas Porter, pastor of Sixth Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham and once an assistant to Mart...
H
Harold Ralston
Released
Harold Ralston was an Alabama Communist Party organizer and one of six Communists tried on vagrancy charges be...
A
Andy Riendeau
Andy J. Riendeau, known as "John Two Names," is a longtime Native American activist whom the Anarchist Black C...
I
Ike Robinson
Released
Ike Robinson was an American Federation of Labor organizer, one of ten arrested at Russellville, Alabama durin...
E
Ed Sears
Released
Ed Sears was sentenced to ten months in Birmingham, Alabama in 1935 for possessing ILD pamphlets, under the ci...
R
Robert Shelton
Released
Robert Shelton, the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America — then the largest Klan organization in the...
P
Patricia Ann Shuttlesworth
Released
Patricia Ann Shuttlesworth, a teenage daughter of the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, was hauled off a Greyhound bus...
R
Ruby Fredericka Shuttlesworth
Released
Ruby Fredericka Shuttlesworth, a daughter of the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, was arrested and jailed with her sis...
F
Fred Shuttlesworth Jr.
Released
Fred Shuttlesworth Jr., the young son of the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, was hauled off a Greyhound bus and jaile...
J
Judson Simpson
Released
Judson Simpson was a Black sharecropper and Share Croppers' Union member wounded and arrested in the 19 Decemb...
L
Laura Stark
Released
Laura Stark was arrested in May 1934 in the police raid on the International Labor Defense office in Birmingha...
L
L. C. Tate
Released
L. C. Tate was a jailed leader of Mine-Mill Local 137 in the 1937 Thomas Furnace (Republic Steel) strike at Bi...
W
Wirt Taylor
Released
Wirt Taylor was an Unemployed Council organizer in Birmingham, Alabama sentenced in 1933 to six months at hard...
D
Donald Thigpen
Alabama prisoner who faced a March 10, 1978 execution date alongside Johnny Imani Harris; at Harris's request...

Institutions in Alabama

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

Birmingham City JailBirmingham, Alabama
19 cases
Kilby PrisonMontgomery, Alabama
11 cases
Holman PrisonAtmore, Alabama
9 cases
Atmore State PrisonAtmore, Alabama
7 cases
Montgomery City JailMontgomery, Alabama
4 cases
Montgomery County JailMontgomery, Alabama
3 cases
FCI TalladegaTalladega, Alabama
2 cases
Etowah County JailGadsden, Alabama
1 case