Search Help

How does this work?
There are many ways to search the collections of the Freedom Archives. Below is a brief guide that will help you conduct effective searches. Note, anytime you search for anything in the Freedom Archives, the first results that appear will be our digitized items. Information for items that have yet to be scanned or yet to be digitized can still be viewed, but only by clicking on the show link that will display the hidden (non-digitized) items. If you are interested in accessing these non-digitized materials, please email info@freedomarchives.org.
Exploring the Collections without the Search Bar
Under the heading Browse By Collection, you’ll notice most of the Freedom Archives’ major collections. These collections have an image as well as a short description of what you’ll find in that collection. Click on that image to instantly explore that specific collection.
Basic Searching
You can always type what you’re looking for into the search bar. Certain searches may generate hundreds of results, so sometimes it will help to use quotation marks to help narrow down your results. For instance, searching for the phrase Black Liberation will generate all of our holdings that contain the words Black and Liberation, while searching for “Black Liberation” (in quotation marks) will only generate our records that have those two words next to each other.
Advanced Searching
The Freedom Archives search site also understands Boolean search logic. Click on this link for a brief tutorial on how to use Boolean search logic. Our search function also understands “fuzzy searches.” Fuzzy searches utilize the (*) and will find matches even when users misspell words or enter in only partial words for the search. For example, searching for liber* will produce results for liberation/liberate/liberates/etc.
Keyword Searches
You’ll notice that under the heading KEYWORDS, there are a number of words, phrases or names that describe content. Sometimes these are also called “tags.” Clicking on these words is essentially the same as conducting a basic search.

Political Prisoners- General Info

    Political prisoners are people prosecuted for their political beliefs or ideologies, activities, and affiliations with social movements. Political prisoners can be anybody from any race, culture, age, or gender. They are often associated and identified as leaders in organizations or movements opposed to the atrocities committed by the United States government. Some examples of these crimes are the infringement of privacy, police brutality, genocide of indigenous people, forced dispossession of land.        
    The objective of the incarceration of political leaders by the government is to destabilize social movements of resistance. Political prisoners are often given harsh, long term sentences in prisons where they are mistreated on a daily basis. Mistreatment includes extensive periods of time in solitary confinement, denied recreational time, and insufficient visiting time. The primary purpose of mistreatment of political prisoners is to prevent organizing behind prison walls. The government often paints a negative picture of political prisoners by calling them criminals or terrorists in an effort to justify the imprisonment of these people to the general public. Often times when Political Prisoners are being prosecuted, they are charged with other crimes to hide the fact they are being imprisoned for their political beliefs. Their commonality is that they are fighting government oppression and were unjustly prosecuted in an effort to destroy their respective movements.             

Documents

Interview with Susan Rosenberg about conditions in the women’s political prison, Lexington. Interview with Susan Rosenberg about conditions in the women’s political prison, Lexington.
Call Number: PM 438AFormat: Cass AProducers: Sally O’Brian, Terry BissonCollection: Political Prisoners- General Info
Interview with Susan Rosenberg, an American revoluntionary anti-imperialist female political prisoner, about Lexington prison. . Susan Rosenberg describes the focus of Lexington as “the psychological element of incarceration to disintigrate the personality”. She speaks about the terribly harsh and restrictive conditions of Lexington, as well as the psychological impact of the prison. Rosenberg speaks about how every prisoner is there for political reasons, as the control unit is not based on disciplinary measures, but on classificationof who and what the prisoners are associated with. Susan Rosenberg’s attorney, Michael Schubert, speaks about the isolation and solitary confinement the Lesington prisoners experience, and how such isolation is aimed at keeping the prisoners isolated from politics.