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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.

J
J. A. Gann
The July 23 Talladega dispatch individually identifies him among four Samoset Cotton Mill union men already he...
L
Lindsay Gladwell
Lester Carter identifies Lindsay Gladwell as the younger brother of Odell Gladwell, called Texas Slim, among t...
O
Odell Gladwell
Lester Carter identifies the white train witness called Texas Slim as Odell Gladwell and names Lindsay Gladwel...
J
John Gleason (Scottsboro witness, 1931)
Lester Carter names John Gleason of Georgia among the white train witnesses confined in Scottsboro during the...
L
L. Goodwin
L. Goodwin was a Black worker arrested at a May Day meeting in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1933 after trying to pr...
N
Ned Goodwin
Ned Goodwin spent time in jail following Birmingham’s 1933 May Day repression, Kelley reports.
J
James Gray
Released
James Gray was a Black sharecropper jailed after the July 1931 attack on the Share Croppers' Union at Camp Hil...
T
Thomas Gray
Released
Thomas Gray was a Black sharecropper jailed after the July 1931 attack on the Share Croppers' Union at Camp Hi...
T
Tommy Gray
Released
Tommy Gray was an Alabama sharecropper and brother of Ralph Gray, killed during the Camp Hill repression. The...
G
Greathouse
Released
Greathouse, whose given name is not supplied, was one of four sharecroppers reported released from Dadeville j...
A
Arthur Green
Kelley identifies Arthur Green as a Black Communist jailed in Birmingham in 1934 for possessing labor circular...
B
Bollen Green
Bollen Green was a Black Republic Steel blast-furnace striker in Birmingham. A June 6 dispatch reports that he...
W
William Gribb
Released
William Gribb was a Black sharecropper jailed at Dadeville, Alabama, after the July 1931 Camp Hill repression...
S
S. H. Dalrymple
S. H. Dalrymple was international president of the United Rubber Workers. The Gadsden report states that he wa...
J
J. H. Powell
J. H. Powell was arrested in Bessemer, Alabama after a bombing at a deputy’s home amid the miners’ strike, acc...
R
R. F. Hall
Named with Robert Wood as a Birmingham Downs Ordinance defendant whose trial was postponed again on September...
R
Raymond Harris
Raymond Harris was a Black worker sentenced under Birmingham’s Downs literature law. Page 3 reports a six-mont...
W
Willie Joe Hart
Released
Willie Joe Hart was a seventeen-year-old Black UCAPAWA-CIO volunteer organizer in Tallapoosa County, Alabama,...
J
J. W. Hayes
Released
The Rev. J. W. Hayes was a Birmingham movement minister and one of the eight petitioners in Walker v. City of...
L
Lincoln Heard
Released
Named among the Atmore prisoners falsely indicted alongside Johnny Imani Harris in the killing of a guard duri...
H
Henderson (Birmingham ILD picnic, 1934)
Henderson, whose first name is not supplied, was a Black worker arrested with Robert Washington at an Internat...
W
William Holloway
Page 2's continuation of the Birmingham iron-ore strike report individually names Joe Evans, Ben Winston and W...
T
Taft Holmes
Released
Taft Holmes was a Black sharecropper and member of the Share Croppers’ Union near Camp Hill, Alabama. He joine...
W
Will Hosea
Will Hosea was a Black participant arrested in the October 22, 1933 police raid on an interracial unemployment...

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