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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.

859Documented
24In custody
787Released
2Awaiting trial

Eras of repression in New York

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

1950s 137 1910s 137 1970s 87 1960s 87 1980s 81 1930s 65

Documented cases

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

Jim Forest
Released
Conscientious objector discharged from US Navy 1961. FOR Vietnam Program Coordinator who, in 1968, joined the...
William Z. Foster
Released
William Z. Foster was the national chairman of the Communist Party USA and the lead-named defendant in the 194...
Louis Fraina
Released
Louis C. Fraina was an Italian-born American Marxist theorist, journalist, and editor who emigrated to the Uni...
Marquis Frasier
Released
Marquis Frasier, 27, said he was at the Public Safety Building "when the riots occurred" on May 30, 2020 in Ro...
Emanuel Fried
Released
Emanuel Fried was a Buffalo union leader who challenged a House Un-American Activities Committee subcommittee...
Betty Gannett
Released
Betty Gannett was a Communist Party USA organizer and a member of the partys National Education Department. Sh...
Deskaheh
In Exile
Levi General, known by his hereditary title Deskaheh, was a Cayuga chief and Speaker of the Six Nations Heredi...
Alice Gerard
Released
Alice Gerard — SOA Watch line-crosser at Fort Benning, Georgia. Convicted of trespass on a military installati...
Simon W. Gerson
Released
Simon W. "Si" Gerson was a journalist, electoral organizer, and longtime political-action director of the Comm...
Brianna Gibson
Released
Brianna Gibson was one of 22 Greenpeace activists federally charged after the September 12, 2019 blockade of t...
David Gilbert
Released
David Gilbert is an American radical Marxist, author, and a member of The Weather Underground Organization. In...
Benjamin Gitlow
Released
Benjamin Gitlow Son of Russian-Jewish immigrants and a former New York State assemblyman; founding member of t...
Richard Gladstein
Released
Richard Gladstein was one of the five defense lawyers for the eleven Communist leaders tried at the 1949 Foley...
John Theodore Glick
Released
John Theodore “Ted” Glick, born in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, is an American antiwar, progressive and climate-j...
Ben Gold
Released
Bessarabia-born; longtime Communist president of the International Fur and Leather Workers Union. Resigned pub...
Emma Goldman
Released
Emma Goldman was a Russian-born anarchist writer, editor, and orator who emigrated to the United States in 188...
David Gordon
Released
David Gordon was a Communist trade unionist, author, editor, and journalist. Born in Ukraine, he immigrated to...
Teresa Grady
Released
Teresa Grady is an Ithaca Catholic Worker and one of three Grady sisters (with Clare and Mary Anne) at the hea...
Mary Anne Grady-Flores
Released
Mary Anne Grady-Flores is an Ithaca Catholic Worker, photographer, and one of three Grady sisters (with Clare...
Marcus Graham
Released
Marcus Graham (the pen name of Shmuel Marcus) was an anarchist editor — of the Anarchist Soviet Bulletin (1919...
Rebecca Grecht
Released
Rebecca Grecht, a Workers Party election campaign manager, was arrested in the July 3, 1928 Wall Street demons...
Calogero Greco
Released
Calogero Greco, born in Sicily around 1893–1894 (a 1927 report gives his age as 33), was a Sicilian-born veter...
Gil Green
Released
ONE OF TWELVE COMMUNISTS SENTENCED UNDER DENNIS V. UNITED STATES: Gil Green, a leader of the communist Workers...
Shields Green
Shields Green was a fugitive from slavery in South Carolina who had escaped to the North and become close to F...

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
184 cases
Manhattan House of Detention (the Tombs)New York, New York
17 cases
Sing Sing Correctional FacilityOssining, New York
14 cases
Attica Correctional FacilityAttica, New York
13 cases
Metropolitan Correctional CenterNew York, New York
11 cases
MDC BrooklynBrooklyn, New York
9 cases
Metropolitan Correctional Center, New YorkNew York, New York
9 cases
Blackwell's Island PenitentiaryNew York, New York
8 cases