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American Civil Liberties Union Records: Subgroup 2
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The ACLU is the preeminent civil liberties organization in the United States. The ACLU describes itself as "our nation's guardian of liberty, working daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country." Since its inception in 1920, the ACLU has played a part in nearly every significant American social or political issue in the 20th century. This includes important work in the areas of civil rights, children and women's rights, freedom of speech (and all First Amendment questions), and due process, among many others.
For a more detailed history of the ACLU, please see the history in the finding aid for the processed portion of the ACLU Records.
Baldwin, Roger N. (Roger Nash) (1884-1981)Roger Nash Baldwin was born in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, on January 21, 1884 into a prominent Boston family. His parents were Frank Fenno Baldwin and Lucy Cushing (Nash) Baldwin, and he was the first of six children, three boys and three girls. His parents were Unitarians with strong liberal connections; W. E. B. Dubois was a Baldwin family friend and a frequent guest at the house. Baldwin's upbringing in this atmosphere in Wellesley, where he attended public school, instilled in him a life-long sympathy for the underdog. He attended Harvard, graduating in 1905 with an A.B. and an A.M. (received after a summer course in sociology).
On the advice of his father's friend and lawyer, Louis D. Brandeis, he decided to become a social worker. From 1906 to 1917 he lived and worked in St. Louis, determined to make his own way rather than depend on the family connections that would have helped him in Boston. While there he worked in the neighborhood settlements, served as chief officer of the St. Louis Juvenile Court and voluntary secretary of the National Probation Association, and founded the sociology department at Washington University, where he taught from 1906 to 1910. While in St. Louis he wrote (with Bernard Flexner) Juvenile Courts and Probation, which remained a standard in the field for many years. Ironically, in the 1960s the ACLU challenged the standards promulgated in the book, citing the need to guarantee juveniles due process.
In St. Louis Baldwin became attracted to the radical political and social movements that greatly affected his politics until the 1930s. He was a close friend of the anarchist Emma Goldman and he moved in left-wing circles. During the 1920s he joined the I.W.W., and in 1927 he visited the Soviet Union, producing from his trip a book entitled Liberty Under the Soviets, published in 1928. He broke with the Communists and other radicals only in 1939, after having been horrified by the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
Baldwin left St. Louis in 1917, when the United States entered World War I, in order to become involved with the pacifist movement. He was a member of the American Union Against Militarism (AUAM), an organization which lobbied first against U.S. entrance into the war and later for a negotiated peace. He also worked with the National Civil Liberties Bureau (NCLB), an arm of the AUAM founded to defend conscientious objectors but which quickly broadened its scope to include in its mission defense of the freedoms of speech, press, and conscience. In 1918 Baldwin was called up for military service, but as a conscientious objector he refused to go. His arrest, trial, and conviction made headlines, and he spent a year in jail, calling it "my vacation on the government."
After his release, Baldwin spent four months in the Midwest working as an industrial laborer in several factories, but he was soon persuaded by his war-time NCLB colleagues to return to New York.
The end of the war had not meant an end to civil liberties violations, which were being fanned by the post-war "Red Scare," and in 1920 the NCLB was transformed into the American Civil Liberties Union. Baldwin became its executive director.
Baldwin remained in this position until 1950. As executive director, he was intimately associated with two of the biggest cases with which the ACLU was involved in these years, the Scopes trial and the Sacco-Vanzetti case. In 1950 Baldwin resigned as executive director to become the ACLU's international adviser and to devote himself more fully to his work with the International League for the Rights of Man, where he served as chair for fifteen years. In that position he traveled extensively; his ports of call included the Middle East, Cuba, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Peru, Nigeria, many Western European countries, Poland, and the Soviet Union.
Baldwin became involved with international affairs in 1947, when the War Department invited him to go to Japan and South Korea to assist in developing civil liberties agencies in the infant democracies. He founded the Japan Civil Liberties Union, and the Japanese government awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun in recognition of his service to Japanese democracy. In 1948 General Lucius Clay invited Baldwin to Germany and Austria to perform a similar service in those two countries; he returned to Germany several times in subsequent years.
Baldwin was also extremely active in the study and protection of civil liberties in Puerto Rico, setting up a commission to deal with the issue in the 1960s. A close friend of Puerto Rico's Governor Luis Muñoz Marín, Baldwin traveled to Puerto Rico frequently in his later years. He often taught a seminar on constitutional rights at the University of Puerto Rico law school.
Baldwin was connected to various educational institutions throughout his life. In addition to his stint at Washington University and his recurrent seminar course at the University of Puerto Rico, he taught several courses at the New School for Social Research in New York. He served for many years on the Overseers' Visiting Committee to the Harvard Economics Department. He also received numerous honorary degrees, including ones from Brandeis, Columbia, Haverford, Washington University, and Yale. His other honors included the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded in 1981.
Baldwin remained active right until the end of his long life; in a series of memoranda on old age, he attributed his longevity to his constant activity. He was an avid outdoorsman who loved canoeing and bird-watching. He was a director and vice-president of the National Audubon Society and donated some of his land in New Jersey to the Audubon Society as a bird sanctuary. While in St. Louis, Baldwin adopted two boys who had come to the attention of the Juvenile Court, Oral James and Otto Stolz. James followed his adoptive father to prison as a conscientious objector during World War I, while Stolz served in the army in France. Stolz committed suicide in 1930.
After being released from prison in 1919, Baldwin married Madeleine Zabriskie Doty, a journalist and feminist who never took Baldwin's name. They divorced in 1936, although they had not lived together for over a decade, and in 1936 Baldwin married Evelyn Preston. Evie had been married before and had two small boys, Carl and Roger, who chose to take Baldwin's name long before their mother, a feminist, did. Roger and Evie had one daughter, Helen. Evie died in 1962 at the age of 64 from cancer. Helen died in 1979 at the age of 41 from cancer. Baldwin himself died of heart failure on August 26, 1981, at the age of 97.
Dorsen, NormanGeneral Counsel (1969-1976), National Board of Directors Chairman (1976-1980), National Board of Directors President (1981-1991)
Dulles, John Foster (1888-1959)John Foster Dulles (1888-1959), the fifty-third Secretary of State of the United States for President Dwight D. Eisenhower, had a long and distinguished public career with significant impact upon the formulation of United States foreign policies. He was especially involved with efforts to establish world peace after World War I, the role of the United States in world governance, and Cold War relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Dulles was born on February 25, 1888 in Washington, D.C. to Allen Macy Dulles and Edith Foster. He attended Princeton University, graduating in 1908. During this time, he had his first experience with foreign affairs, serving as secretary to his grandfather, John Watson Foster, during the Second Hague Peace Conference in 1907. After graduation, he studied philosophy and international law for a year at the Sorbonne in Paris, and then attended the George Washington University Law School, earning his LL.B. in 1911. Dulles married Janet Avery on June 26, 1912 and they had two sons, John Walsh and Avery, and one daughter, Lilias Pomeroy (Mrs. Robert Hinshaw).
After his graduation from law school, Dulles joined the prestigious New York law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, which specialized in international law. He worked there from 1911 to 1949, rising to become a senior partner. During World War I, Dulles served as assistant to the chairman of the War Trade Board, and then as counsel to the reparations section of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, and as a member of the American delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, serving as Bernard Baruch's chief legal advisor on the Reparations Commission and also serving on the Supreme Economic Council. After returning to Sullivan and Cromwell, he continued to be active in organizations concerned with world affairs, and to express his views on the United States' role in the world through speeches, articles, and the book War, Peace and Change published in 1939. In 1941 he accepted the chairmanship of the Commission to Study the Bases of a Just and Durable Peace, established by the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America. Dulles presented their "Six Pillars of Peace" plan to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943, as a plan for establishing international cooperation for peace. Throughout his career, Dulles continued to be a prominent lay spokesman for the Protestant church.
Dulles became increasingly involved in politics at the onset of the Cold War. He represented the United States at the San Francisco organizational conference for the United Nations in 1945, and in many subsequent sessions of the United Nations General Assembly. He served as New York's junior senator from 1949 to 1950, replacing Senator Robert F. Wagner, who resigned due to ill health. Dulles then served as special representative of President Truman, with the rank of ambassador, negotiating the Japanese Peace Treaty of 1951 and the Australian, New Zealand, Philippine and Japanese Security Treaties of 1950-1951. During his negotiations, he observed the growing antagonism between the United States and Soviet Union which subsequently hardened his anti-Communist stance.
In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Dulles Secretary of State. His tenure was marked by a close working relationship with the President, staunch anti-Communism, and a philosophy of "collective security" which led to numerous mutual defense treaties. Recognizing that NATO would only provide for the defense of Western Europe, Dulles initiated the Manila Conference in 1954 that resulted in the formation of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO), an agreement between eight nations for the defense of Southeast Asia, and was influential in establishing the 1955 Baghdad Pact for the defense of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan. He was also known for enunciating a policy of "massive retaliation," whereby any attack on U.S. interests anywhere in the world by the Soviet Union or China would be met with an attack on those countries, including the possible use of nuclear weapons.
Several notable international events marked Dulles's tenure. In 1955, in an effort to induce President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt to support the West, Dulles offered to provide financing for the construction of the Aswan Dam on the Nile River to produce electrical power and for irrigation. However, Dulles withdrew the offer in July 1956 after receiving protests from United States cotton interests and Jewish-Americans, and after Nasser purchased weapons from Czechoslovakia, suggesting he was aligning with the Soviets. Nasser responded by nationalizing the British-owned Suez Canal. Without notifying the United States, Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt in October 1956 but failed to capture the canal. Dulles condemned the action at the United Nations, and under economic pressure from the United States, the allies withdrew by early 1957.
Concurrent with the Suez crisis, an uprising in Hungary resulted in the establishment of a new government committed to withdrawing the country from the Warsaw Pact. The Soviets responded with military force, leading the Hungarians to appeal to the United Nations for aid, pleas that were ignored, allowing the Soviets to subsequently crush the revolt and maintain their grip on Eastern Europe.
In 1958, tensions between Communist China and Taiwan threatened to break out into war when Communist China renewed their shelling of the islands of Jinmen and Mazu and the United States avowed not to appease Mao Zedong. Dulles convinced Taiwan's Chiang Kai-shek to renounce the use of force against mainland China and to withdraw some troops from Jinmen and Mazu, and the Chinese ceased their shelling. Also in 1958, the Soviets threatened to sign a peace treaty with East Germany, terminating the joint occupation of Germany established after World War II, unless a satisfactory agreement was reached within six months. In what would be his last international trip as Secretary of State, Dulles traveled to Europe to reassure Chancellor Konrad Adenauer that the United States would maintain its commitment to West Germany. Eventually, the Soviets agreed to negotiate without a deadline.
Stricken with cancer, Dulles resigned as Secretary of State in April of 1959. He died on May 24, 1959 in Washington, D.C.
Ennis, Bruce J. (1941)Legal Director (1977-1982)
Hays, Arthur Garfield (1881-1954)Arthur Garfield Hays was born in Rochester, New York on December 12, 1881. His father and mother, both of German descent, belonged to prospering families in the clothing manufacturing industry. After graduating from City College of New York in 1902 and going on to receive his law degree from Columbia in 1905, Hays formed a law firm with two of his former classmates that gained prominence representing German interests in World War I.
Hays was active in civil liberties issues before becoming general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920. From this point one can recognize the emergence of what many have called Hays's "dual personality," in which he became a wealthy lawyer who represented the interests of power and fame (his more prominent clients ranged from Wall Street brokers and best-selling authors to notorious gamblers and the Dionne quintuplets)--while at the same time rigorously defending the individual liberty of victims of discriminatory laws.
The list of famous cases in which Hays took part is lengthy, including the Scopes trial (often called the "monkey trial") in 1925 in which a school teacher in Tennessee was tried for teaching evolution; the Sacco and Vanzetti case in which two Italian anarchists in Boston were put to death in 1927 for a murder they denied committing; and the Scottsboro case where eight black men from Alabama were condemned to die in 1931 for allegedly attacking two white women. Hays also attended the Reichstag trial in Berlin on behalf of Georgi Dmitrov, a Bulgarian Communist tried by Nazis in 1933 for burning the Reichstag.
In addition to his work as a lawyer, Hays wrote an astounding number of books and articles. As a gifted writer and eloquent debater, he added his perspective to virtually every individual rights issue of his day. His autobiography, entitled City Lawyer: the Autobiography of a Law Practice (1942), provides a colorful account of his more noteworthy cases, and his articles and book reviews demonstrate his wide-ranging knowledge of a nation and a world experiencing dramatic change in the way individual rights were perceived.
Hays married Blanche Marks in 1908 and divorced her in 1924. They had one daughter, Mrs. Lora Spindell. He married Aline Davis Fleisher in 1924, who died in 1944. They also had a daughter, Mrs. Jane Butler. After more than four decades at the center of the individual rights debate, Hays died of a heart attack on December 14, 1954.
Neuborne, Burt (1941)Staff Counsel (1971-1975), Assistant Legal Director (1972-1974), Legal Director (1981-1986)
Pound, Ezra (1885-1972)American poet and critic, leader of the Imagists, Ezra Pound was also a scholar and respected translator.
Powell, John A. (John Anthony)Legal Director (1987-1993)
Reitman, AlanPublicity Director (1949-1950), Public Relations Director (1950-1958), Assistant Director (1951-1958), Associate Director (1959-1989)
These Records document the activities of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in protecting individual rights between 1947 and 1995. The collection contains correspondence, clippings, court documents, memoranda, printed matter, minutes, reports, briefs, legal files, exhibit materials, and audio-visual materials. Also included are materials from ACLU affiliate organizations, the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee and national office legal department records (1945-1960).
Due to the exceptionally large volume within the ACLU Records, succinct series and subseries descriptions have been written, providing a basic outline of the records available. The researcher should always consult the folder list to ascertain if the records contain a topic of interest since not all subjects are mentioned in these brief descriptions.
The researcher should also be aware that many topics may be covered in more than one series or subseries. For instance, materials concerning freedom of the press are located in both the Mass Communications and Censorship subseries. Often the series descriptions note similar materials found in other parts of this collection.
1917-1947 Records [Volumes 1-2762]
Please see the ACLU finding aid, 1917-1947, for a description of the bound volumes and their arrangement.
1947-1995 Records [Boxes 1-2103]
These records are arranged in the following six series with all but two series further broken down into smaller subseries:
Historical sketch based on In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU by Samuel Walker. See also Samuel Walker's The American Civil Liberties Union: An Annotated Bibliography.
FOR DIGITIZED CONTENT: Please see the Guide to the American Civil Liberties Union Records.
Materials are transferred from the ACLU annually.
This finding aid describes a portion of the American Civil Liberties Union Records held at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library. For an overview of the entire collection, instructions on searching the collection and requesting materials, and other information, please see the Guide to the American Civil Liberties Union Records.
For preservation reasons, original analog and digital media may not be read or played back in the reading room. Users may visually inspect physical media but may not remove it from its enclosure. All analog audiovisual media must be digitized to preservation-quality standards prior to use. Audiovisual digitization requests are processed by an approved third-party vendor. Please note, the transfer time required can be as little as several weeks to as long as several months and there may be financial costs associated with the process. Requests should be directed through the Ask Us Form.
This collection was processed by Paula Jabloner in 1994-1996 with the assistance of Assistant Archivist for Technical Services Daniel Linke, Special Collections Assistants Amy Escott, Claire Johnston, Alison McCuaig, and Tom Rosko, and students Laurie Alexander, Christina Aragon, Laura Burt, Jue Chen, Clement Doyle, Joe Faber, Said Farah, Boyd Goodson, Naomi Harlin, Janet Hine, Matthew Honahan, Katherine Johnson, Damian Long, Theresa Marchitto, Laura Myones, Olivia Kew, Grace Koo, Dan Sack, Bijan Salehizadeh, Tina Wang, Kyle Weston, and Elizabeth Williamson.
During the processing of this collection, many items were discarded, including newspaper clippings from the New York Times and other major newspapers, government publications, well- known serial publications, and publications and large distribution memoranda from well-known and well-documented organizations such as the American Jewish Committee or Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Due to limitations in processing time, not every file is in exact chronological or alphabetical order.
People
- Baldwin, Roger N. (Roger Nash) (1884-1981)
- Dorsen, Norman
- Dulles, John Foster (1888-1959)
- Ennis, Bruce J. (1941)
- Epperson, Susan
- Escobedo, Danny
- Everson, Arch R.
- Gault, Gerald Francis (1949 or 1950-)
- Gideon, Clarence Earl
- Griswold, Estelle
- Hays, Arthur Garfield (1881-1954)
- Holtzman, Elizabeth.
- Jacobellis, Nico
- Levy, Herbert Monte (1923)
- Malin, Patrick Murphy (1903-1964)
- Miranda, Ernesto
- Neier, Aryeh (1937)
- Neuborne, Burt (1941)
- Nixon, Richard M. Richard Milhous (1913-1994)
- Pemberton, John de J., Jr. (1919-2009)
- Perry, Richard L.
- Pound, Ezra (1885-1972)
- Powell, John A. (John Anthony)
- Reitman, Alan
- Schempp, Edward L.
- Schwarzschild, Henry
- Scopes, John Thomas (1900-1970)
- Seeger, Daniel A.
- Tinker, John Frederick
- Wulf, Melvin A.
Organization
- American Union Against Militarism
- United States. | Constitution. 1st-10th Amendments
- National Civil Liberties Bureau (U.S.)
- Marshall Civil Liberties Trust Fund
- New York Times company
Subject
- Abortion -- Law and legislation -- United States -- 20th century
- African Americans -- Civil rights -- History -- 20th century
- African Americans -- Legal status, laws, etc.. -- 20th century
- Noncitizens -- United States -- Civil rights -- 20th century
- Amnesty -- United States -- 20th century
- Anti-Communist movements -- United States -- History -- 20th century -- Sources
- Apportionment (Election law) -- United States -- 20th century
- Assembly, Right of -- United States -- 20th century
- Censorship -- United States -- 20th century
- Church and state -- United States -- 20th century
- Citizen suits (Civil procedure) -- United States -- 20th century
- Civil rights -- United States -- 20th century
- Civil rights movements -- United States -- 20th century
- Communism -- United States -- 20th century
- Conscientious objectors -- United States -- 20th century
- Constitutional law -- United States -- 20th century
- Discrimination -- United States -- 20th century
- Discrimination in employment - Law and legislation - United States - 20th century
- Draft resisters -- United States -- 20th century
- Due process of law -- United States -- 20th century
- Equality before the law -- United States -- 20th century
- Freedom of association -- United States -- 20th century
- Freedom of information -- United States -- 20th century
- Freedom of movement -- United States -- 20th century
- Freedom of religion -- United States -- 20th century
- Gay rights -- United States -- 20th century
- Homosexuality -- Government policy -- United States -- History -- 20th century
- Indians of North America -- Civil rights. -- 20th century
- Insanity -- Jurisprudence -- United States -- 20th century
- Internal security -- United States -- History -- 20th century
- Jews -- Legal status, laws, etc -- United States -- 20th century
- Labor laws and legislation -- United States -- 20th century
- Law -- United States -- 20th century -- Cases
- Legal aid -- United States -- 20th century
- Legal services -- United States -- 20th century
- Loyalty oaths -- United States -- 20th century
- Mental health laws -- United States -- 20th century
- Minorities -- Legal status, laws, etc -- United States -- 20th century
- Police power -- United States -- 20th century
- Political questions and judicial power -- United States -- 20th century
- Political refugees -- Legal status, laws, etc -- United States -- 20th century
- Political rights -- United States -- 20th century
- Political rights, Loss of -- United States -- 20th century
- Privacy, Right of - United States - 20th century
- Race discrimination -- Law and legislation -- United States -- 20th century
- Records -- Access control -- United States -- 20th century
- Sacco-Vanzetti Trial, Dedham, Mass., 1921
- Sex discrimination -- United States -- 20th century
- Strikes and lockouts -- United States -- 20th century -- Cases
- Subversive activities -- United States -- 20th century
- Teaching, Freedom of -- United States -- 20th century
- Television in politics -- United States -- 20th century
- Trials -- United States -- 20th century
- Vietnam War, 1961-1975 -- United States
- Women's rights -- United States -- 20th century
Place
Occupation
- Publisher
- Public Policy Papers
- Finding Aid Date
- 2003
- Sponsor
- These papers were processed with the generous support of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the John Foster and Janet Avery Dulles Fund.
- Access Restrictions
-
Subgroup 2 is open for research use.
- Use Restrictions
-
Single copies may be made for research purposes. To cite or publish quotations that fall within Fair Use, as defined under U. S. Copyright Law, no permission is required. For instances beyond Fair Use, it is the responsibility of the researcher to determine whether any permissions related to copyright, privacy, publicity, or any other rights are necessary for their intended use of the Library's materials, and to obtain all required permissions from any existing rights holders, if they have not already done so. Princeton University Library's Special Collections does not charge any permission or use fees for the publication of images of materials from our collections, nor does it require researchers to obtain its permission for said use. The department does request that its collections be properly cited and images credited. More detailed information can be found on the Copyright, Credit and Citations Guidelines page on our website. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us through the Ask Us! form.
Collection Inventory
Series 1 Finding Aid: American Civil Liberties Union Records: Organizational Matters Series, 1947-1995.
Series 1 is arranged according to the Union's organizational hierarchy.
Physical Description1 item
No arrangement action taken or arrangement information not recorded at the time of processing.
Series 2 Finding Aid: American Civil Liberties Union Records: Project Files Series, 1964-1979.
Physical Description1 item
Series 3 Finding Aid: American Civil Liberties Union Records: Subject Files Series, 1921-1990.
The subject files consist of records gathered by the ACLU on various topics of interest pertaining to its mission. The records here are divided into four broad categories: Freedom of Belief, Expression, and Association; Due Process of Law; Equality Before the Law; and International Civil Liberties. Except for International Civil Liberties, each is then further subdivided alphabetically by topic. Generally, the subject files contain background material on a topic, as well as correspondence, memoranda, and other items documenting the ACLU's involvement with the issue.
Subseries 3 is divided into four broad subject areas and further divided alphabetically within each by topic.
Physical Description1 item
Series 4 Finding Aid: American Civil Liberties Union Records: Legal Case Files Series, 1933-1990.
This series consists of legal case files which cover the widest range of civil liberties issues. It contains briefs and other pleadings, correspondence, memoranda, and notes. There are over 5500 folders representing approximately 3000 individual cases, many of which went before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Legal Case Files series is not a comprehensive representation of the cases in which the ACLU has been involved. Some records have yet to be transferred to Princeton and are still being maintained by the ACLU Legal Department. The series is arranged alphabetically by case or individual name. Files may appear listed under either the plaintiff's or the defendant's names. Also some cases are filed under a subject heading such as "Gay Rights Task Force" or "Airport Searches". One should also consult the MCA/UMI Microfilm guides for the case files series which may contain copies of ACLU legal briefs filed for many of the cases listed here.
Some important Supreme Court cases in which the ACLU participated that are documented in this series include:
Abingdon School District v. Schempp (1963): Building on Engel v. Vitale in an 8-1 decision, the Court struck down Pennsylvania's in-school Bible-reading law as a violation of the First Amendment. [Box #1371]
Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969): After the ACLU's fifty-year struggle against laws punishing political advocacy, the Court now adopted the ACLU's view of the First Amendment--that the government could only penalize direct incitement to imminent lawless action--and invalidated, in one fell swoop, the Smith Act and all state sedition laws restricting radical political groups. [Box #1254]
Brown v. Board of Education (1954): In perhaps the most far-reaching decision of this century, the Court declared racially-segregated schools unconstitutional and overruled the "separate but equal" doctrine announced in the infamous 1896 decision, Plessy v. Ferguson. [Box #1260]
Buckley v. Valeo (1976): Freedom of speech and association won a partial victory in this challenge to the limits on campaign spending imposed by amendments to the Federal Elections Campaign Act. The Court struck down the Act's restrictions on spending "relative to a candidate," and its required disclosure of $100-plus political contributions. [Box #1272]
Burstyn v. Wilson/McCaffrey (1952): Artistic freedom triumphed when the Court overruled its 1915 holding that movies "are a business, pure and simple," and decided that New York State's refusal to license "The Miracle" violated the First Amendment. The state censor had labeled the film "sacrilegious." [Box #1274]
Cohen v. California (1971): Reversed the conviction of a man who allegedly disturbed the peace by wearing a jacket that bore the words, "Fuck the draft," while walking through a courthouse corridor. The Court rejected the notion that the state can prohibit speech just because it is "offensive." [Box #1303]
Doe v. Bolton (1973): Doe was the companion case of Roe v. Wade, the famous abortion case which erased all existing criminal abortion laws and recognized a woman's constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. In Doe, the Court ruled that whether an abortion is "necessary" is the attending physician's call, to be made in light of all factors relevant to a woman's well-being. [Box #1344]
Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972): Extending Griswold, this decision overturned the conviction of a reproductive rights activist who had given an unmarried woman in Massachusetts a contraceptive device. The Court held that allowing distribution of contraceptives to married, but not unmarried, people violated the equal protection clause. [Box #1364]
Engel v. Vitale (1962): In an 8-1 decision, the Court struck down the New York State Regent's "nondenominational" school prayer, holding that "It is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers." [Box #1365]
Epperson v. Arkansas (1969): The Court ruled that Arkansas had violated the First Amendment, which forbids official religion, with its ban on teaching "that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animals." [Box #1218]
Escobedo v. Illinois (1964): Invoking the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, the Court threw out the confession of a man whose repeated requests to see his lawyer, throughout many hours of police interrogation, were ignored. [Box #1370]
Everson v. Board of Education (1947): The Court found school boards' reimbursement of the public transportation costs incurred by parents whose children attended parochial schools constitutional, but Justice Black's statement -- "In the words of Jefferson, the clause...was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and State..." - was the Court's first major utterance on the meaning of Establishment Clause. [Box #1371]
Gideon v. Wainwright/Cochran (1963): Clarence Earl Gideon, an indigent drifter from Florida, made history when, in a handwritten petition, he persuaded the Court that poor people had the right to a state-appointed lawyer in non-capital criminal cases. [Box #1400]
Griswold v. Connecticut (1965): Among the 20th-century's most influential decisions, it invalidated a Connecticut law forbidding the use of contraceptives on the ground that a right of "marital privacy," though not specifically guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, is protected by "several fundamental constitutional guarantees." [Box #1412]
Hannegan v. Esquire (1946): A major blow against censorship. The Court severely limited the Postmaster General's power to withhold mailing privileges for allegedly "offensive" material. [Box #1423]
Holtzman v. Schlesinger (1973): A dramatic lawsuit, brought by the ACLU for a New York congresswoman, to halt the bombing of Cambodia as an unconstitutional Presidential usurpation of Congress's authority to declare war. After a federal order to stop the bombing was stayed on appeal, the ACLU sent a lawyer across the country to the remote vacation hideaway of Justice William O. Douglas, who vacated the stay and, though later overruled, succeeded in halting the bombing for a few hours. [Box #1439]
In re Gault (1966): The most important landmark for juveniles, as it established specific due process requirements for state delinquency proceedings and stated, for the first time, the broad principle that young persons have constitutional rights. [Box #1398]
Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964): Justice Potter Stewart's famous statement, that although he could not define "obscenity," he "knew it when [he] saw it," crowned the Court's overturning of a cinema owner's conviction for showing "The Lovers," by Louis Malle. [Box #1455]
Kent v. Dulles (1958): The Court ruled that the State Department had exceeded its authority in denying artist Rockwell Kent a passport because he refused to sign a "noncommunist affidavit." The right to travel, said the Court, is protected by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. [Box #1475]
King v. Smith (1968): The court invalidated a "man in the house" rule that denied welfare to children whose mother was living with a man, unmarried. The decision benefited an estimated 500,000 poor children, who had previously been excluded from aid. [Boxes #1477 and 1696]
Levy v. Louisiana (1968): The Court invalidated a state law that denied an illegitimate child the right to recover damages for a parent's death. The ruling established the principle that the accidental circumstance of a child's birth does not justify denials of rights. [Box #1499]
Loving v. Virginia (1967): A civil rights landmark that invalidated the anti-miscegenation laws of Virginia and 15 other southern states. The Court ruled that criminal bans on interracial marriage violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause and "the freedom to marry," which the Court called "one of the basic civil rights of man." [Box #1508]
Mapp v. Ohio (1961): A landmark, in which the Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary rule, first applied to federal law enforcement officers in 1914, applied to state and local police as well. [Box #1514]
Miranda v. Arizona (1966): This famous decision established the "Miranda warnings," a requirement that the police, before interrogating suspects, must inform them of their rights. The Court embraced the ACLU's amicus argument that a suspect in custody has both a Sixth Amendment right to counsel and a Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. [Box #1549]
New York Times v. Sullivan (1964): A victory of freedom of the press. Public officials could not recover damages for defamation, ruled the Court, unless they could prove that a newspaper had impugned them with "actual malice." A city commissioner in Montgomery, Alabama, had sued over publication of a full-page ad written by civil rights activists. [Box #1584]
O'Connor v. Donaldson (1975): The Court's first ruling on the rights of mental patients supported a non-violent man who had been confined against his will in a state hospital for 15 years. Mental illness alone, said the Court, could not justify "simple custodial confinement" on an indefinite basis. [Box #1347]
Poe v. Ullman (1961): Though unsuccessful, this challenge to Connecticut's ban on contraceptive sales set the stage for the Griswold decision of 1965. In a 33-page dissent, Justice John Harlan argued that the challenged law was "an intolerable invasion of privacy in the conduct of one of the most intimate concerns of an individual's private life." [Box #1626]
Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins (1980): A victory for freedom of expression as the court rejected shopping mall owners' claim that their property rights compelled reversal of the California Supreme Court's requirement that a shopping center allow distribution of political pamphlets on its premises. [Box #1639]
Reed v. Reed (1971): A breakthrough women's rights decision that struck down a state law giving automatic preference to men over women as administrators of decedents' estates. For the first time, the Court ruled that sex-based--like race-based--classification violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. [Box #1645]
Rochin v. California (1952): Reversing the conviction of a man whose stomach had been forcibly pumped for drugs by a doctor at the behest of police, the Court ruled that the due process clause outlaws "conduct that shocks the conscience." [Box #1657]
Smith v. Collin (1978): Related to Skokie v. National Socialist Party, the peculiar facts of this, one of the ACLU's most controversial First Amendment lawsuits ever, attracted enormous attention: American Nazis wanted to march through a Chicago suburb, Skokie, where many Holocaust survivors lived. The ACLU's challenge to the village's ban on the march was ultimately upheld. [Box #1304]
Speiser v. Randall (1958): Arguing before the Court on his behalf, ACLU lawyer Lawrence Speiser won his challenge to a California law requiring that veterans sign a loyalty oath to qualify for a property tax exemption. [Box #1710]
Tinker v. Des Moines (1969): A landmark lift for symbolic speech and students' rights. The Court invalidated the suspension of public school students for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War, writing that students did not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." [Box #1735]
Trop v. Dulles (1958): An American stripped of his citizenship for being a deserter in World War II suffered cruel and unusual punishment, said the Court, in violation of the Eighth Amendment. [Box #1740]
U.S. v. New York Times (1971): The Pentagon Papers case, a landmark among prior restraint cases, in which the leaking of the Papers to the press for publication by Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department official, did not, said the Court, justify an injunction against publication on national security grounds. [Box #1584]
U.S. v. Nixon (1974): This test of Presidential power involved Richard Nixon's effort to withhold crucial Watergate tapes from Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski. In the only amicus brief filed, the ACLU argued: "There is no proposition more dangerous to the health of a constitutional democracy than the notion that an elected head of state is above the law and beyond the reach of judicial review." The Court agreed and ordered the tapes handed over. [Box #1774]
U.S. v. Seeger (1965): In one of the first Vietnam War decisions, the Court extended conscientious objector status to those who did not necessarily believe in a Supreme Being, but who opposed war based on sincere beliefs that are equivalent to religious faith. [Box #1785]
U.S. v. Vuitch (1971): The Court's first abortion rights case, involving a doctor's appeal of his conviction for performing an illegal abortion. The Court upheld the constitutionality of the statute used to convict, but expanded the "life and health of the woman" concept to include psychological well-being, and ruled that the prosecution must prove the abortion was not necessary for a woman's physical or mental health. [Box #1795]
Wallace v. Jaffree (1985): This important church/state separation decision found Alabama's "moment of silence" law, which required public school children to take a moment "for meditation or voluntary prayer," in violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause. [Box #1816]
Watkins v. United States (1957): Under the First Amendment, the Court imposed limits on the investigative powers of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which had found a labor leader in contempt for refusing to answer questions about his associates' membership in the Communist Party. [Box #1825]
Series 4 is arranged alphabetically by project and case name, respectively.
Physical Description1 item
Series 5 Finding Aid: American Civil Liberties Union Records: Printed Materials Series, 1917-1995.
Series 5 is arranged by form and alphabetically or chronologically therein.
Physical Description1 item
Series 6 Finding Aid: American Civil Liberties Union Records: Audiovisual Materials Series, circa 1920-1995.
The Audio Visual Series contains VHS video cassette tapes, Beta video cassette tapes, 1" and 2" video tape, 16 mm film, 2-inch videotape, microfilm, audio cassettes, 33 1/3 rpm and 45 rpm records, photographs, and reel-to-reel audio tapes. All of the audio-visual material is arranged by format, then chronologically, except for the photographs which are arranged alphabetically by subject or individual.
The VHS video tapes contain a few sessions from the 1989 Biennial Conference, but primarily consist of TV talk shows, press conferences, network news, and documentaries covering a wide range of civil liberties issues. Most shows feature one or more ACLU-affiliated guests. The VHS tapes span 1979 through 1992, and 1995.
The audio cassettes consist almost entirely of recordings of the sessions from the 1985, 1987, and 1989 Biennial Conferences. Also included are three tapes from Series 3, Subject Files: Deprogramming. For the 1985 Conference, a list of the presenter(s) of the various sessions is provided, however, this information was not available for the 1987 and 1989 Conferences.
The reel-to-reel audio tapes are divided into two sections: seven-inch reels and five-inch reels. The seven-inch reels contain debates involving Fulton Lewis III from the early 1960s, recordings from the 1970 Biennial Conference, and various ACLU board meetings from 1973-1976. The five-inch reels contain ACLU public service announcements. There are a few reels, both seven- inch and five-inch, that are presently unidentified.
The 16mm films include TV shows and films that the ACLU had significant interest in, including "Operation Abolition," a 1960 propaganda film prepared by the House Committee on Un-American Activities distorting the events of a student protest against the HUAC hearings in San Francisco. Also included is the response film "Operation Correction."
The photographs are primarily portraits and group photos of ACLU officials. Negatives for some of the photographs are also enclosed. There are also a few slides. The 2" video tapes consist of eight reels from the "Rights of Americans" series and "commercial spots" for the Amnesty Project.
Series 6 is arranged by form and alphabetically or chronologically therein.
Physical Description1 item