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Iowa

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 Iowa.

76Documented
1In custody
49Released

Eras of repression in Iowa

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

1910s 20 1930s 14 1960s 11 1980s 6 2000s 5 1800s 5

Documented cases

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

Brian Terrell
Released
Brian Terrell is co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and lives at the Strangers and Guests Catho...
S
Steve Sheridan
Steve Sheridan of the Davenport Catholic Worker community in Iowa was individually reported as having actually...
T
Ted Baer
Released
Ted Baer was the Communist Party's Sioux City section organizer. In September 1939 police arrested him and two...
H
Hartwell G. Bonner
Hartwell G. Bonner, a 22-year-old Black worker, married Doris Chase in Sioux City, Iowa, on January 8, 1935, w...
K
Kirk Brown
Kirk Brown was arrested during a June 28, 2008 Des Moines anti-torture vigil and held overnight. The Nuclear R...
B
Bob Carson
Released
Bob Carson was Iowa state secretary of the Communist Party. In September 1939 he spoke at a private meeting in...
D
Doris Chase
Doris Chase was jailed in Sioux City, Iowa after marrying Black worker Hartwell G. Bonner on January 8, 1935....
C
Clive Lisbon De Patten
Clive Lisbon De Patten testified before a House subcommittee on October 8, 1970 that he was jailed in Des Moin...
E
Evelyn De Patten
Evelyn De Patten was jailed during the April 13, 1969 Des Moines confrontation following a Black Panther break...
H
Henry Clay Dean
Released
Marshall describes Dean as a Mount Pleasant, Iowa lawyer and Democratic speaker arrested at Keokuk in May 1863...
L
Laurence Dewees
Released
Laurence Dewees was a Quaker conscientious objector from Iowa imprisoned during World War I. Court-martialed f...
W
William Nye Doty
Released
William Nye Doty was from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. William Nye Doty was a conscientious objector imprisoned during...
S
Steven Green
Steven Green was a Des Moines Black Panther participant, also identified as Stephen Green and later Ako Abdul-...
R
Rudy Holly
The September 14, 1939 AP dispatch printed in the Daily Iowan September 15, page 6, names Rudy Holly, age 26,...
W
Wilbur Howard
Wilbur Howard was one of six men jailed in Sioux City during September 1939 raids on Communist organizers foll...
R
Richard Johnstone
Released
Richard Johnstone, born about 1944 and raised on a farm near Brooklyn, Iowa, was a graduate music student when...
C
Calvin Jones Jr.
Calvin Jones Jr. was a 19-year-old Waterloo resident arrested in Black Hawk County on December 27, 1968 in the...
M
Morris Kammen
William Douglas identifies this St. Paul Socialist draft resister among eight men confined at Camp Dodge in Fe...
A
Alva Kirkpatrick
Released
Alva Kirkpatrick was one of two brothers jailed in Council Bluffs, Iowa, after taking Illinois Central Railroa...
B
Buddy Kirkpatrick
Released
Buddy Kirkpatrick was one of two brothers jailed in Council Bluffs, Iowa, after taking Illinois Central Railro...
E
Edward Krueger
Waterloo Unemployed Council leader Edward Krueger was held incommunicado after an effort to resist the evictio...
E
Elmer Lathrop
Footnote 25 describes Lathrop, a Minneapolis Pentecostal draft resister, receiving a ten-month sentence to jai...
G
Guy H. Little
Released
Guy H. Little was a Quaker conscientious objector from Iowa imprisoned during World War I. Court-martialed for...
C
Carl Martin
Released
Carl Martin was one of six men jailed during the September 1939 raids on Communist organizers in Sioux City, I...

Institutions in Iowa

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

Camp McClellanDavenport, Iowa
11 cases
Indianola jailIndianola, Iowa
6 cases
Polk County Jail (Iowa)Des Moines, Iowa
3 cases
Iowa Department of Corrections
2 cases
Keokuk military guardhouseKeokuk, Iowa
1 case