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North Carolina

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 North Carolina.

200Documented
5In custody
147Released
1Awaiting trial

Eras of repression in North Carolina

Where North Carolina’s entries fall across the census’s historical eras.

1930s 48 1970s 37 1920s 32 2010s 15 2020s 14 1800s 10

Documented cases

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

R
Robert Barnes
Robert Barnes was a prisoner in a Mecklenburg County, North Carolina chain-gang camp whose feet were amputated...
E
Emanuel Biddings
Released
Emanuel Biddings was a Black tobacco sharecropper and war veteran in Person County, North Carolina. He was jai...
F
Florence Blalock
Released
Florence Blalock, also spelled Blaylock in the court record, was a Burlington, North Carolina textile worker p...
K
Kenneth Boyd
Kenneth Boyd was listed by Breakthrough in its Summer 1992 prisoner directory as a Gulf War military resister...
R
Riddock Brooks
Released
Riddock Brooks was a free Black civilian servant of a Confederate officer, captured at Hatteras Inlet on Augus...
M
Myrtle Carden
Myrtle Carden was a 17-year-old Stehli Silk worker in High Point, North Carolina, who had worked for the compa...
R
Ruth Carden
Ruth Carden was arrested by police in High Point, North Carolina, during the Stehli Silk strike of August–Sept...
B
Beullah Carter
Released
Beullah Carter was arrested in connection with the strike of unemployed relief workers at High Point, North Ca...
F
Floris Cauce
Floris Cauce was a Greensboro anti-Klan activist and the widow of a Communist Workers Party member killed in t...
B
Bill Caudle
Released
Bill Caudle was a fifty-one-year-old textile mill night watchman and union organizer in Lumberton, North Carol...
J
James A. Chance
Released
James A. Chance was a Coharie father who joined relatives in challenging the segregated school system in Dunn,...
C
Cary Coe
Cary Coe, printed as Carry Coe in The Militant, was a fifteen-year-old member of the National Committee to Com...
C
Carlos Coleman
Released
Carlos Coleman, known as King Spanky, was a Greensboro Latin Kings defendant in United States v. Cornell. He d...
J
Julius Cornell
Released
Julius White Cornell Jr. was a member of the Winston-Salem National Committee to Combat Fascism and Black Pant...
W
Willie M. Cox
Released
Willie M. Cox was a Quaker conscientious objector from North Carolina imprisoned during World War I. Court-mar...
S
Sylvia Crouch
Page 1’s September 27 Concord dispatch names this Young Communist League organizer as arrested in Gastonia the...
R
Richard Crowder
Released
Richard Crowder was one of the Monroe, North Carolina defendants prosecuted on kidnapping charges arising from...
C
C. D. Saylors
The December 2 report says the Ella May Wiggins witness was physically released Saturday, November 30, 1929 on...
H
Hazel Dawson
Released
Hazel Dawson was arrested in connection with the strike of unemployed relief workers at High Point, North Caro...
J
John Lewis Edwards
The May 25 Raleigh dispatch reports a Black condemned prisoner whose execution was reprieved for thirty days o...
C
Chioke Auden Fugate
Released
Chioke Auden Fugate, 23, was indicted March 6, 2023 with co-defendant Duncan Andrew Small after they allegedly...
G
Grady Fuller
Released
Grady Fuller was a twenty-two-year-old member of the National Committee to Combat Fascism in Winston-Salem, No...
J
Jerry Furlough
Released
Jerry Furlough was a Burlington, North Carolina textile worker charged in the prosecution arising from the Sep...
A
Andrew Salvarani Garcia-Smith
Released
Andrew Salvarani Garcia-Smith, 32, was charged for the burning of the Market House in Fayetteville, NC on May...

Institutions in North Carolina

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

North Carolina state courtsWilmington, North Carolina
10 cases
Gaston County JailGastonia, North Carolina
9 cases
North Carolina State Penitentiary (Central Prison)Raleigh, North Carolina
7 cases
Buncombe County Superior Court
5 cases
Union County JailMonroe, North Carolina
3 cases
Camp Lejeune brigCamp Lejeune, North Carolina
2 cases
North Carolina State Prison System
2 cases
FMC ButnerButner, North Carolina
2 cases