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Massachusetts
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 Massachusetts.
351Documented
1In custody
196Released
3Awaiting trial
Eras of repression in Massachusetts
Where Massachusetts’s entries fall across the census’s historical eras.
1930s 102
1920s 38
1970s 30
1980s 27
1800s 27
1910s 24
Recent dashboard entries from Massachusetts
The newest published events and reporting located in Massachusetts, updated automatically from the live dashboard.
Prosecution
Judge accused of enabling immigrant to escape ICE gets a rare public reprimand
Arrest
Five arrested during climate protest that blocked traffic in Copley Square
Arrest
Climate protestors block rush hour traffic in downtown Boston
Protest
Protesters demand Charles River Laboratories end beagle testing at its downtown Worcester lab
Arrest
Two arrested plastering anti-ICE posters on a Citizens Bank branch in Boston, part of a campaign over its financing of ICE detention operators
Protest
11 arrested in civil disobedience at Burlington ICE facility
Protest
11 arrested after protesting outside Burlington ICE facility
Protest
Eleven activists arrested trying to deliver care packages to detainees at the Burlington ICE facility
Documented cases
351 entries in the census — every one stays in the record, whether the case is open or closed.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Released
Thomas Wentworth Higginson was a Boston abolitionist indicted in connection with the May 26, 1854 storming of...
Paul Emerson Hood
Released
Paul Emerson Hood was a Quaker peace activist and co-founder of Ailanthus, a Boston-area Christian nonviolence...
Thomas Hutchinson
Released
Thomas Hutchinson was a Massachusetts former royal governor. He was individually named in the 1778 Massachuset...
Richard Johnson
Released
Richard Clark Johnson was an Irish-American radar engineer associated with Mitre Corporation. He was arrested...
Leon J. Kamin
Released
Leon J. Kamin was a research assistant cited for contempt of Congress after refusing to answer Senator McCarth...
Randy Kehler
Released
Randy Kehler (July 16, 1944 – July 2024) was an American anti-war activist, draft resister, and war tax resist...
Irving Keith
Released
Irving Keith was a Young Communist League organizer born in New York in 1910. He worked in the Bronx garment t...
Eli Keller
Released
Eli Keller was one of the leaders of the 1928 New Bedford, Massachusetts textile strike who, the ILD's Labor D...
Abner Kneeland
Released
Abner Kneeland was a theologian who advocated for women's rights, racial equality, and religious skepticism. I...
Raymond Kroll
Released
Raymond Kroll was an Army deserter sheltered by antiwar protesters at Boston University’s Marsh Chapel in 1968...
Jaan Laaman
Released
Jaan Karl Laaman is an anti-imperialist of Estonian heritage who emigrated to the United States as a child. He...
Timothy Leary
Released
Leary was a psychologist and psychedelic evangelist who became one of the most visible figures of the 1960s co...
Daniel Leonard
Released
Daniel Leonard was a Massachusetts Loyalist lawyer. He was individually named in the 1778 Massachusetts Banish...
Charles H. MacKinnon
Released
Charles H. MacKinnon was an organizer for the Metal Mine Workers Industrial Union, Local 800, from Boston, Mas...
Peter Eamon Maguire
Released
Peter Eamon Maguire, known as Eamon McGuire, was an aviation engineer and IRA activist born in County Monaghan...
Eric M. Mann
Released
Eric M. Mann, born in Brooklyn in 1942, was a civil-rights and antiwar organizer associated with CORE, SDS and...
Carol Manning
Released
Carol Ann Manning was an early member of the United Freedom Front and the wife of co-founder Tom Manning, livi...
Thomas Manning
Thomas Manning was a Boston-born former Marine, named Thomas William Manning, who co-founded the United Freedo...
Alex Markley
Released
Alex Markley was a field organizer for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) and a...
Quinn McCormic
Released
Quinn McCormic is a Massachusetts activist who traveled to Toronto, Canada to protest the G-20 Summit in June...
Tarek Mehanna
Released
Tarek Mehanna is a pharmacist raised in Sudbury, Massachusetts, who translated and posted documents associated...
Eulalia Mendes
Released
Eulalia Mendes was one of the women leaders of the 1928 New Bedford, Massachusetts textile strike, repeatedly...
John Merrick
Released
John Merrick was an active union shoe worker in Haverhill, Massachusetts. John Merrick was framed up in Januar...
Katherine Morey
Released
Katherine Morey was a Massachusetts suffragist and Silent Sentinel. Among the first NWP picketers arrested at...
Institutions in Massachusetts
Prisons, jails, and detention centers in Massachusetts that appear in the census’s case files.
Fort WarrenBoston, Massachusetts
75 cases
Norfolk County Jail Dedham, Massachusetts
10 cases
Boston Court House
3 cases
Charlestown State PrisonBoston, Massachusetts
2 cases
Deer Island PrisonBoston, Massachusetts
2 cases
Boston JailBoston, Massachusetts
2 cases
Hampshire County Jail (Northampton)Northampton, Massachusetts
1 case
Salem, MA federal jailSalem, Massachusetts
1 case