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.

Committee to End the Marion Lockdown

The Committee to End the Marion Lockdown (CEML) was a movement organization that opposed control unit prisons in particular, and racism and oppression in general. It was founded in 1985 and came to a close in 2000. Over the course of those 15 years, CEML led and organized hundreds of educational programs and demonstrations in many parts of the country and tried to build a national movement against “end-of-the-line” prisons. Along the way the Committee wrote thousands of pages of educational and agitational literature and pioneered new ways of analyzing and fighting against this national quagmire that morphed into the proliferation of the “prison industrial complex.”

Collection includes: Publications on their efforts to shut down the Marion Prison control unit, prevent the opening of USP Florence, CO; protests against toxic water at Crab Orchard Lake; efforts to improve conditions for inmates; efforts to stop the proliferation of Control Units in general; and further human rights and social justice in the US prison system.

Kurshan, N. (2012). OUT OF CONTROL: A Chronological Narrative of the Committee to End the Marion Lockdown's 15 Year Struggle (manuscript ed., p. 1).

Documents

An Updated Public Report about the Continuing Lockdown and Torture of the Prisoners at U.S. Penitentiary, Marion An Updated Public Report about the Continuing Lockdown and Torture of the Prisoners at U.S. Penitentiary, Marion
Authors: Jan Susler, Michael Deutsch, Jim Roberts, Dennis CunninghamPublisher: Marion Prisoners' Rights ProjectYear: 1984Format: ReportCollection: Committee to End the Marion Lockdown
3/26/1984 update on conditions of the Marion Lockdown. Accounts of food tampering, abuse, neglect, isolation and cancel of rehabilitation programs included.
Report to the Prisoners at Marion About the Congressional Hearing on March 29, 1984 Report to the Prisoners at Marion About the Congressional Hearing on March 29, 1984
Authors: Jan Susler, Jim RobertsPublisher: Marion Prisoners' Rights ProjectYear: 1984Format: ReportCollection: Committee to End the Marion Lockdown
3/26/1984 Report of testimony to the inumane, unconstitutional and counter-productive conditions of the Marion Lockdown.
Marion Prisoners Rights Project update, The Lockdown Marion Prisoners Rights Project update, The Lockdown
Authors: Jan Susler, Jim RobertsPublisher: Marion Prisoners' Rights ProjectYear: 1984Format: ReportCollection: Committee to End the Marion Lockdown
10/11/1984 report on the conditions of the Marion Lockdown and the struggle against it's inhumane existance.