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New York

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 New York.

2,078Documented
40In custody
1,023Released
12Awaiting trial

Eras of repression in New York

Where New York’s entries fall across the census’s historical eras.

1930s 714 1940s 176 1970s 171 1920s 166 1910s 166 1950s 159

Documented cases

2,078 entries in the census — every one stays in the record, whether the case is open or closed.

William Walter Remington
Released
William Walter Remington was a Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude Dartmouth economist (1939) who held senior post...
Courtland Renford
Released
Courtland Renford, 20, was charged with arson after throwing a burning basket into Buffalo City Hall during we...
Sam Resto
Released
Sam Resto is a New York City activist who was arrested on August 13, 2020 in connection with actions during th...
Megan Rice
Released
Sister Megan Gillespie Rice SHCJ was an American Roman Catholic nun of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, a...
Clinton Rickard
Released
Clinton Rickard was a Tuscarora leader and U.S. Army veteran who founded the Indian Defense League of America...
James Ricks
Released
James Ricks is a peace activist from Ithaca, New York who participated in the October 2012 protest at Hancock...
Francisco Molina del Rio
Francisco Molina del Rio was a Cuban worker and supporter of the Cuban Revolution imprisoned in New York after...
Jose Rios
Released
Puerto Rican activist and telephone repairman prosecuted with the New York 8+ in a federal RICO conspiracy cas...
Pedro Antonio Rios
Released
Pedro Antonio Rios was a twenty-two-year-old Puerto Rican sentenced to death in New York after an April 1954 f...
Dennis Rivera
Released
Dennis Rivera, the Puerto Rico-born president of New York's 1199/SEIU health-care workers union — then one of...
Paul Robeson
Released
Paul Robeson — the Black singer, actor, and activist — was held in contempt by the House Un-American Activitie...
Geraldine Robinson
Released
Geraldine Robinson Pointer worked with Black liberation activist and bookseller Martin Sostre at Buffalo’s Afr...
Fred H. Robison
Released
Fred H. Robison was an IBSA member (i.e., a Jehovah's Witness). Fred H. Robison began serving a prison sentenc...
Merrill Rogers
Released
Merrill Rogers was the Business manager of The Masses. Indicted in November 1917 along with editor Max Eastman...
Joe Rogers (New York newspaper seller)
Joe Rogers, a Daily Worker seller on New York’s Lexington Avenue subway, was arrested by two company policemen...
Massimo Romagnoli
Released
Massimo Romagnoli, a former member of the Italian Parliament, conspired in 2014 with U.S. citizen Virgil Flavi...
Lee Roper
Released
Lee Roper was a Black Panther Party member indicted in the April 2, 1969 New York Panther 21 conspiracy case....
Andrés Rosado
Released
Andrés Rosado, with his brother Julio, was a Puerto Rican independence activist and grand jury resister, jaile...
Julio Rosado
Released
Julio Rosado, with his brother Andrés, was a Puerto Rican independence activist and one of the well-known "gra...
Eve Rosahn
Released
White anti-imperialist activist jailed for civil contempt in the early 1980s after refusing to cooperate with...
Ethel Rosenberg
Released
Ethel Rosenberg was raised in a poor Jewish tenement family on Manhattan's Lower East Side; labor activist and...
Jerome Rosenberg
Jerome Rosenberg identified himself by his full name and the alias Jerry the Jew in February 1972 WBAI intervi...
Julius Rosenberg
Released
Julius Rosenberg was an American electrical engineer and member of the Communist Party USA who, with his wife...
Susan Rosenberg
Released
Susan Rosenberg was a New York-born radical who joined the May 19th Communist Organization in the late 1970s a...

Institutions in New York

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

Ellis Island Immigration StationNew York, New York
215 cases
Fort LafayetteNew York, New York
202 cases
Manhattan House of Detention (the Tombs)New York, New York
21 cases
Attica Correctional FacilityAttica, New York
20 cases
Sing Sing Correctional FacilityOssining, New York
15 cases
Ellis IslandNew York, New York
15 cases
Metropolitan Correctional CenterNew York, New York
10 cases
MDC BrooklynBrooklyn, New York
9 cases