Political prisoners in the United States have existed through its history and into the present. Prominent US political prisoners have included anti-war socialists, civil rights movement activists, conscientious objectors, and Global War on Terrorism detainees.
Particularly famous political prisoners include Alice Paul, Eugene Debs, Sacco and Vanzetti, Angelo Herndon, Martin Luther King Jr., Angela Davis, Chelsea Manning, and Mahmoud Khalil.
History
A political prisoner is someone persecuted for their political beliefs, their political actions, or for their "threat" to the government, though this term is inherently "fuzzy" because commentators disagree on the acceptable scope of political action.
Imprisonment for mere expression of political beliefs is rare in the modern United States, because free speech and free expression are well-established in law. This was not always the case. For example, the Smith Act (1940) allowed trial and imprisonment of dozens of Communist Party USA leaders for advocating the overthrow of the United States government. This prosecution was only halted by Yates v. United States (1957).
Human rights groups such as Amnesty International argue that, despite these speech protections, US federal and state governments have repeatedly targeted people affiliated with dissident movements for "neutralization" by applying much harsher sentences for real or "framed" crimes, such as during COINTELPRO.
The US has recognized conscientious objection to military service since its founding. However, the US only recognizes blanket objection to all wars, and does not recognize objection to specific wars, which is included in the UDHR's "right to refuse to kill". Many prisoners have been objectors to specific wars (such as World War I, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, or the Iraq War).
Scope
There are no systematic estimates of the present or past scope of political prisoners in the United States. The number of political prisoners cannot be precisely determined. However, Jane Taubner wrote in 1992 that "most of the individuals and organizations investigating the existence of political prisoners in the United States agree that there are a minimum of over 100 political prisoners in America".
During a July 1978 interview with French newspaper Le Matin de Paris, Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young caused controversy when he said: "We still have hundreds of people that I would categorize as political prisoners in our prisons. Maybe even thousands, depending on how you categorize them."
In 1988, Peggy Halsey, a senior member of the United Methodist Church General Board of Global Ministries, wrote about inmates of the High Security Unit in FMC Lexington and claimed that "over 100 other inmates are recognized as political prisoners by their respective movements for social change".
In 1990, various left-wing groups supported the Freedom Now! coalition and organized a "Special International Tribunal" (or "1990 Tribunal") on political prisoners in the US. The 1990 tribunal was inspired by the 1951 We Charge Genocide petition and modeled on the 1966 Russell Tribunal on Vietnam. Freedom Now! alleged that there are "more than 100 people locked up in U.S. prisons because of their political actions or beliefs". The 1990 Tribunal reached the verdict that political people "have been subjected to disproportionately lengthy prison sentences and to torture, cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment within the U.S. prison system."
Left-wing groups have often argued that mass incarceration in the United States itself represents a form of political imprisonment, given that the "convict class" overwhelmingly come from working class and other marginalized backgrounds. This view was especially popular in some radical prison populations in the 1970s.
Early notable alleged political prisoners The concepts of "political prisoner" and "prisoner of conscience" were underdeveloped until the post-World War II era, which saw the creation of intergovernmental and international human rights groups like the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (1946) and Amnesty International (1961). The prisoners below were arrested before or during this era:
The Sedition Act of 1798, part of the Alien and Sedition Acts, was used to prosecute opponents of President John Adams, including Benjamin Franklin Bache (died before trial) for anti-Adams publications in the Philadelphia Aurora; Matthew Lyon (imprisoned 4 months in 1798) for anti-Adams editorials and republishing French revolutionary Joel Barlow's poems; Anthony Haswell (imprisoned 2 months in 1800) for defending Lyon; Thomas Cooper (imprisoned 6 months in 1800) for a broadside against the Acts; James Thomson Callender (imprisoned 9 months in 1800-01) for an anti-Federalist pamphlet; David Brown (imprisoned 18 months in 1800-01) for the Dedham Liberty Pole protest against the Acts; and Charles Holt (imprisoned 6 months in 1800-01) for criticism of Alexander Hamilton and the standing army. In 1801, newly elected President Thomas Jefferson pardoned all violators of the Acts.
Alice Paul (imprisoned 1917), a feminist, was incarcerated for peacefully picketing for women's suffrage. Paul explicitly described herself as a political prisoner in efforts that led to the 19th Amendment. Other feminists arrested for picketing for women's suffrage led the 1919 Prison Special train tour.
During World War 1, the Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918 prohibited any "disloyal" statement about the US government, the US Constitution, or military conscription. Thousands of Americans were jailed for violating these acts, including many members of the Socialist Party of America and Industrial Workers of the World. Liberal opposition to the Acts and defense of conscientious objectors birthed the National Civil Liberties Bureau (CLB), later renamed the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Charles Schenck (imprisoned 19191920) and Elizabeth Baer (imprisoned 19181919), members of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party in Philadelphia, were convicted of sedition for distributing 15,000 anti-conscription leaflets to conscripted men. In March 1919, the Supreme Court upheld their conviction and the Acts as constitutional in Schenck v. United States. Eugene Debs (imprisoned 19191921), an anti-war socialist, was convicted of 10 counts of sedition for opposing US involvement in World War 1. On September 18, 1918, he was sentenced to ten years in prison and life disenfranchisement. In March 1919, the Supreme Court upheld Debs' conviction and again upheld the constitutionality of the Acts in Debs v. United States. On April 13, 1919, Debs was imprisoned. On May Day 1919, protests of Debs's imprisonment led to the May Day riots of 1919 in Cleveland, after which Socialist Party offices in Cleveland were looted and burned by conservatives. While in prison, he ran in the 1920 United States presidential election, receiving 919,799 votes (3.4 percent), the highest number of votes for a Socialist Party presidential candidate in the United States. In late 1921, Debs' sentence was commuted by President Warren G. Harding. The "Four Russians" (Jacob Abrams, Hyman Lachowsky, Samuel Lipman, and Mollie Steimer), anarchist immigrants from Russia who supported the revolution against the Tsar of Russia, were convicted of sedition for producing leaflets against the 1918 US invasion of Russia. In November 1919, the Supreme Court upheld their convictions and the constitutionality of the Acts in Abrams v. United States. The Four Russians were imprisoned until 1921, when they were pardoned, exiled from the United States, and shipped to the Soviet Union. Victor L. Berger (convicted, never imprisoned) was convicted of sedition in 1919 for his anti-war newspaper articles. In 1921, the Supreme Court accepted Berger's appeal and overturned his conviction in Berger v. United States, on the basis that the judge had staunch anti-German biases, but did not rule on the Acts. As a result of his felony conviction, the House of Representatives twice denied Berger his seat in Congress. Anita Whitney (imprisoned in 1920) was convicted of "criminal syndicalism" under the California Criminal Syndicalism Act for her membership in the Communist Party USA. In 1927, the Supreme Court upheld her conviction and the Act in Whitney v. California, using the "bad tendency" standard. Sacco and Vanzetti (imprisoned 19211927), both anarchists, were convicted and executed for murdering two people during an armed robbery. Historian Kathlyn Gay includes them in a list of "political prisoners" and quotes Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis as saying "their trial and appeals were permeated by prejudice against foreigners and hostility toward unorthodox political views". Angelo Herndon (imprisoned 19331937), an African-American labor organizer and member of the American Communist Party, was convicted of insurrection after leading a large peaceful demonstration of unemployed black and white workers in Atlanta. The day after the demonstration, Angelo was arrested and was found in possession of communist publications. Fulton County Prosecutor John Hudson charged Angelo with "inciting an insurrection" under an 1861 slave statue that made the possession or distribution of seditious literature punishable by death. Hudson proclaimed that Herndon's trial was also a trial "of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and Kerensky, and every white person who believes that black and white should unite for the purpose of setting-up a Nigger Soviet Republic in the Black Belt". An all white jury found Angelo guilty and was sentenced to 1820 years. Angelo won an appeal and was released on bail in December 1934. The Georgia Supreme Court later upheld the original conviction and he had to return to prison in October 1935. In April 1937, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case and ruled in favor of Angelo in a 54 decision, striking down the Georgia insurrection for violation of the First Amendment. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (imprisoned 19511953), spies for the Soviet Union, were the first Americans to be executed for espionage. Gay includes them in a list of political prisoners, in part because of their excessive sentence: "No other convicted spy not even Rudolph Abel, the Soviet Union's chief spymaster in the United States was executed by the United States during the entire Cold War".
Martin Luther King Jr., a civil rights activist, was never imprisoned for an extended period of time, but he was arrested 29 times between 1956 and 1964. He is often named as a prisoner of conscience for his nonviolent opposition to racial segregation in the United States. Rosa Parks (arrested 1956), a civil rights activist, is commonly named as a prisoner of conscience for her civil disobedience to Montgomery bus segregation. In the 1970s, Parks organized for the freedom of political prisoners in the United States, particularly cases involving issues of self-defense. She helped found the Detroit chapter of the Joanne Little Defense Committee, supported other prisoner's defense committees, and supported the Wilmington Ten, RNA 11, and Gary Tyler. When Angela Davis was acquitted, Parks introduced her to an audience of 12,000 as a "dear sister who has suffered so much persecution".
Prisoners highlighted by Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an INGO founded to oppose violations of human rights. Amnesty International has named the following people and groups as prisoners of conscience or political prisoners in the United States:
Martin Sostre (imprisoned 19671976) was arrested at his bookstore for "narcotics, riot, arson, and assault", later proven to be fabricated as part of COINTELPRO. Amnesty International wrote that Sostre "was falsely implicated because of his political activities". Sostre's bookstore promoted Black nationalism, internationalism, and anarchism.