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Pennsylvania
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 Pennsylvania.
431Documented
6In custody
377Released
2Awaiting trial
Eras of repression in Pennsylvania
Where Pennsylvania’s entries fall across the census’s historical eras.
1700s 77
1910s 73
1930s 68
2020s 41
1950s 36
1970s 30
Documented cases
431 entries in the census — every one stays in the record, whether the case is open or closed.
Ralph Ginzburg
Released
Ralph Ginzburg was an Avant Garde writer and magazine publisher who famously published a documented collection...
Harry Gold
Released
Philadelphia industrial chemist who began passing Soviet intelligence economic and chemical secrets in 1934. A...
Joe Graber
Released
Joe Graber, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was convicted at the mass IWW trial in Chicago, sentenced to five...
Castner Hanway
Released
Defendant in the federal treason prosecution following the September 11, 1851 Christiana Resistance — an armed...
Mary Donovan Hapgood
Released
Mary Donovan Hapgood, a labor activist who had been a leading figure in the Sacco-Vanzetti defense, was arrest...
Powers Hapgood
Released
Powers Hapgood was a Harvard-educated coal miner, Socialist and labor organizer, who was arrested and jailed n...
Carolyn Hart
Released
Carolyn Hart was a twenty-two-year-old sentenced to two years at the Muncy women's reformatory in the McKeespo...
Herbert Hawkins
Released
Herbert Hawkins was a Philadelphia Black Panther and Vietnam veteran. Police arrested him at the Party’s Mantu...
Albert Hazlett
Albert Hazlett was a Pennsylvania-born veteran of Brown's Kansas militia who escaped Harpers Ferry but was cap...
Edgar Hoover
Released
Edgar Hoover, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was sentenced to three years in prison. He served in Leavenworth...
David Japenga
Released
Convicted of four misdemeanors and a felony for breaking windows at Citizens Bank, Irish Design Center, and Qu...
Christopher Columbus Jones
Released
Philadelphia carpenter and Greenback-Labor activist who led the small Philadelphia contingent of Coxey's Army...
Josephine Kaczor
Released
Josephine Kaczor was a labor organizer and Brookwood Labor College graduate involved in the 1929–1930 hosiery...
William Kantor
Released
William M. Kantor of Philadelphia was drafted in 1917 and imprisoned as a conscientious objector at Fort Leave...
John Kehoe
John “Black Jack” Kehoe, a Girardville tavern-keeper and county delegate of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, w...
Edward J. Kelly
Edward J. Kelly was convicted of the September 3, 1875 murder of mine superintendent John P. Jones and hanged...
Robert Klonsky
Released
Robert Klonsky was a Communist Party organizer and union figure who served as organizational secretary for the...
Steve Kurepa
Released
Steve Kurepa, a union coal miner at Cheswick, Pennsylvania, was arrested in the 22 August 1927 state-police ra...
George Lakey
Released
George Lakey is a Quaker activist, writer and educator in nonviolent action. During the 1963 civil-rights camp...
Jack Law
Released
Jack Law, a machinist from Boston, Pennsylvania, was convicted at the mass IWW trial in Chicago, sentenced to...
Bill Lawrence
Released
Bill Lawrence was a Philadelphia Communist organizer sentenced to four years in 1932 in the wave of mass arres...
Celeste Legere
Awaiting Trial
Worcester, Massachusetts anarchist arrested October 19, 2024 with her partner Cara Mitrano for the alleged rel...
Da'Jon Lengyel
Released
Da'Jon Lengyel, 22, and Christopher Alan West damaged and destroyed by fire a Pittsburgh police vehicle and da...
Dora Lewis
Released
Pennsylvania suffragist and National Woman's Party organizer who served as one of the eldest "Silent Sentinels...
Institutions in Pennsylvania
Prisons, jails, and detention centers in Pennsylvania that appear in the census’s case files.
Allegheny County WorkhouseBlawnox, Pennsylvania
23 cases
Walnut Street JailPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania
20 cases
Philadelphia GaolPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania
18 cases
Butler County PrisonButler, Pennsylvania
13 cases
United States Penitentiary, LewisburgLewisburg, Pennsylvania
13 cases
FCI AllenwoodWhite Deer, Pennsylvania
12 cases
SCI DallasDallas, Pennsylvania
12 cases
Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas / SCI Pennsylvania state prisonsPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania
9 cases