American Civil Liberties Union Records: Subgroup 1, The Roger Baldwin Years 1917-1950
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Overview
Creator:
American Civil Liberties
Union.
Title:
American Civil Liberties Union Records: Subgroup 1, The Roger Baldwin Years
Dates:
1917-1950
Size:
315 linear feet, 1886 bound volumes, 12 archival boxes on 288 reels of microfilm
Call number:
MC001.01
Storage note:
This collection is stored at Mudd Manuscript Library.
Requests will be delivered to Public Policy Papers, MUDD Reading Room .
Location:
Princeton University. Library. Dept. of Rare
Books and Special Collections.
Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library.
Public Policy Papers.
65 Olden Street
Princeton, New Jersey 08540 USA
Language(s) of material:
English.
Abstract
The American Civil Liberties Union Records, The Roger Baldwin years, document the activities of the ACLU from 1917 through 1950. The files contain materials on conscientious objection, freedom of speech, academic freedom, censorship, and labor concerns. The files reflect work on litigation, advocacy, and public policy. Materials include correspondence and newspaper clippings.
Description
Description
The American Civil Liberties Union Records, The Roger Baldwin years, document the activities of the ACLU from 1917 through 1950. The files contain materials on conscientious objection, freedom of speech, academic and religious freedom, censorship, labor rights, the Espionage Act of 1917, political demonstrations, political propaganda, the Ku Klux Klan and other patrioteering organizations, mob violence, racism, lynching, and other civil liberty issues. Materials include correspondence and newspaper clippings. Please see the series descriptions below for additional descriptive information.
This collection consists of 1,886 bound volumes of records from the years 1917-1946, 226 volumes of loose records from 1946-1950, and three boxes (Appendixes 1-3) that contain material primarily from 1940-1946, much of which are available on microfilm. The microfilm does not include complete runs of administrative material such as board minutes, some materials relating to files on the removal of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn from the board, various labor issues, and radio censorship. There are 228 reels of microfilm in the collection.
Collection Creator History
The ACLU During the Baldwin Years, 1917-1950
The American Civil Liberties Union has for the last seventy-five years been the principal defender of the rights that citizens can assert against government. Its primary aims have been the defense of the freedoms of speech and press, the separation of church and state, the free exercise of religion, due process of law, equal protection of the law and privacy rights of all citizens. The organization has been responsible for what historian Samuel Walker has called "a revolution of law and public attitudes toward individual liberty." Walker estimates that modern constitutional law has been shaped in no small measure by the ACLU, with the organization involved in some 80% of the landmark cases in the twentieth century. The ACLU has fostered the growth of tolerance, fought to end racial discrimination, promoted a legal definition of privacy rights, and defended the rights of the unpopular, the powerless and the despised.
Origins of the ACLU
The ACLU began as a part of the American Union Against Militarism (AUAM) which had been formed in New York in 1914 to oppose American entry into World War I. Following the declaration of war in 1917, Crystal Eastman, AUAM's Executive Secretary, and Roger Baldwin, a social worker involved in juvenile justice, established a Bureau of Conscientious Objectors to oppose the new draft law and to advise conscientious objectors. On July 1, 1917, the AUAM created a Civil Liberties Bureau that became an independent organization known as the National Civil Liberties Bureau (NCLB) on October 1, 1917. Once Eastman and Baldwin took their efforts to this new organization, the AUAM quickly folded.
The NCLB had two main tasks: to defend the rights of conscientious objectors imprisoned in camps around the country and to fight the increasing suppression of free speech by both government officials and conservative patriotic societies. Its leadership came from a mix of social workers like Baldwin and Eastman, Protestant clergy (Norman Thomas, Harry F. Ward and John Haynes Holmes) and lawyers (Walter Nelles, Albert DeSilver, L. Hollingsworth Wood and Clarence Darrow).
The NCLB sponsored three tests of free speech rights during wartime, all of which ended in failure for the organization. Socialist Party leader Charles T. Schenck was denied the right to mail antiwar and anti-draft literature in a case which established Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' "clear and present danger" test. Also upheld were convictions of Eugene Debs for condemning war and capitalism in a speech and Jacob Abrams for distributing leaflets opposing the American intervention in Russia.
By late 1918 Roger Baldwin had come to lead the organization due to Eastman's ill health. Baldwin was gifted with the ability to build an organization due to his effectiveness as a publicist, fundraiser and administrator. While Baldwin favored public education and reasoning with public officials, he soon became a target. The NCLB's defense of the Industrial Workers of the World led to investigations by army intelligence and the Bureau of Investigation and to phone taps. On August 31, 1918, federal agents seized the NCLB's files which were eventually to be used by New York State's Lusk Committee prior to their return to the NCLB.
When Congress extended the draft to age 35 late in the war, Baldwin notified his draft board he would refuse induction. Imprisoned in November 1918, Baldwin used the time until his release the following July to read, write, create a prisoners' self-help group, issue a mimeographed newsletter on life in prison and organize the NCLB's records.
The postwar Red Scare, the Palmer raids, new laws on criminal syndicalism and use of red flags, and the need to repeal the Espionage Act and to secure amnesty for wartime dissidents led to calls for a permanent organization after the war. On January 19, 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union received its charter in New York.
ACLU During the 1920s
The ACLU started its career with a bang, issuing a Report upon the Illegal Practices of the United States Department of Justice written by twelve prominent lawyers, including Zechariah Chaffee and Felix Frankfurter. In these early years, Baldwin generally favored working for the cause of labor as a more effective means for obtaining desired changes in society. The failure of litigation efforts during the war probably influenced this early course. Thus during the 1920s the ACLU was substantially involved in efforts to strengthen the labor movement. The ACLU also continued to work for amnesty, to repeal criminal syndicalism laws, to oppose compulsory military training on campuses, and to ward off attacks by right wing groups. It fought book bans by the Customs Service and Post Office. It promoted racial justice while also defending the Ku Klux Klan's right to march and opposing NAACP attempt to ban Birth of a Nation. It defended the rights of Communists to free speech and applied the same standard to Henry Ford's anti-Semitic works.
The ACLU remained a relatively small organization throughout this period with 2500 members in 1930 and a budget of only $25,000 annually. While there was a National Committee--a letterhead group of sixty persons which met annually--decisions were made by a small Executive Committee that met weekly and by a governing Board. The heart of the leadership consisted of Baldwin and his fellow pacifists--Norman Thomas, John Haynes Holmes, L. Hollingsworth Wood and John Nevin Sayre. Baldwin tended to be an autocrat who did not easily share power. Only three of the twenty executive committee members were lawyers and the position of General Counsel was not created until 1929. The organization did not seek a broad constituency and found recruiting labor leaders and conservatives to its board a difficult task. Baldwin recruited most local correspondents during his annual tours around the country. During the 1920s most financial support came from Albert DeSilver (and his widow following his death) and from the American Fund for Public Service (generally known as the Garland Fund), a private foundation to support social reform which the ACLU basically administered until it failed during the stock market crash.
Throughout the 1920s labor and political speech issues predominated. The organization remained silent on such issues as the Volstead Act, the Olmstead wiretapping case, and other due process or privacy law questions. ACLU's greatest claim to fame during this decade was its offer to defend anyone willing to challenge the Tennessee law forbidding teaching the theory of evolution. Clarence Darrow and Arthur Hays, backed by the ACLU, defended John T. Scopes in the famous Dayton, Tennessee "Monkey Trial." Live radio coverage and an enormous press cadre (led by five Baltimore Sun reporters, including H. L. Mencken) made the public aware of the ACLU and helped the organization raise funds.
Other major activities prior to the New Deal included a defense of picketing by laborers in Paterson, New Jersey, establishment of the principle of the incorporation of free speech and press freedoms under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment in Gitlow v. U.S., the unsuccessful appeal of Charlotte Whitney's conviction for organizing on behalf of the Communist Labor Party in California, a reversal of Harold Fiske's conviction as an Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organizer in Kansas, and foundation of the right to counsel in capital cases in the "Scottsboro Boys" appeals.
In the area of censorship, the ACLU led a march to protest a Boston ban of Mencken's American Mercury, defended Margaret Sanger's right to deliver a speech on birth control, stopped a Post Office ban on Mary Ware Dennett's pamphlet The Sex Side of Life, supported a case that ended a Customs Service prohibition on the importation of James Joyce's Ulysses, aided Yetta Sternberg in a California case banning display of a red flag and established limits on prior restraint of the press in the Near v. Minnesota case.
In 1929 Baldwin proposed a broad expansion plan for the organization to include increased interest in civil rights, Native Americans, police brutality, and alien rights; opposition to compulsory military training and censorship; and extension of civil liberties efforts to the international arena. The result was an increase in subject committees (for instance Labor Injunctions and Indian Civil Rights) and a larger network of regional affiliate organizations.
Baldwin continued to try to work from within the government. The Wickersham Commission hired Walter Pollak, Zechariah Chaffee and Carl Stern on Baldwin's recommendation, and its report Lawlessness in Law Enforcement was a major bombshell. The Indian Civil Rights Committee held a day-long conference in 1933 which helped to shape the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. In 1931 the ACLU published Black Justice and Morris Ernst as chair of the Garland Fund's Committee on Negro Work issued the Margold Report suggesting the need for a legal attack on segregation.
Throughout these years and later, the ACLU was by no means monolithic and vigorous debates raged over many of the policy decisions within the organization. For example, the religious element in the organization was not unalterably opposed to Bible reading and release time in schools. While some favored turning to the courts to effect changes, others believed public education, strikes and working for legislative and administrative change would prove more effective. Some preferred broad legal challenges while others wanted narrower tests designed to achieve the desired result in particular cases. The debates in the records of committee and board meetings provide lively and rich documentation of the activities and struggles of the organization.
The New Deal
Given its history of opposition to government power, the ACLU viewed Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal with misgivings. The economic situation had led to increased repression of labor, lynchings and deportations, but the notion of granting more power to the same government that had been the cause of repression during World War I did not sit well with many in the organization.
Throughout the 1930s the ACLU continued to defend free expression, asserting the rights of the German-American Bund in Shall We Defend Free Speech for Nazis in America (1934) and commissioning two studies of Nazis in America ( Shirts!) and of the effects of anti-Fascist laws in Europe. The ACLU opposed Catholic efforts to censor printed works, movies and information on contraception, leading to the resignation of Rev. John Ryan from the National Committee in 1934. Baldwin also appeared regularly on a CBS radio program, "Let Freedom Ring," during the 1930s. Other important activities included opposition to Boss Frank Hague's limits on union activities in Jersey City, cases to extend free speech rights to Communists, a series of Jehovah's Witnesses cases involving flag salutes and permits for literature distribution, and the National Labor Relations Board's attacks on Henry Ford's free speech rights.
The most difficult aspect of the New Deal years for the ACLU was its relationship to the Communist Party. The ACLU's bail fund had been seriously affected when five Communist Party members jumped bail and fled to the Soviet Union in 1930. Yet the two organizations had worked together on Scottsboro, the DeJonge and Herndon free speech cases, and in the International Juridical Association. Thus when the Popular Front was organized by the Communist Party in the 1930s, ACLU and Baldwin joined the effort since he was ever a coalition builder. Opponents continued to allege that the ACLU was a Communist front, especially since Harry Ward chaired both the ACLU and the American League for Peace and Democracy, the largest of the Popular Front organizations.
Communist Party attacks on a Socialist Party rally in Madison Square Garden in 1934 led Norman Thomas and John Haynes Holmes to call for banning Communists from ACLU leadership. In this same decade, the Dies Committee (the House Committee on Un-American Activities, popularly known as HUAC) concluded after its first hearings that one could not say with certainty whether or not the ACLU was a Communist organization. The ACLU responded by leading efforts to abolish the Dies Committee, assigning Abraham Isserman to write the first systematic analysis of the rights of witnesses before investigative committees (a report which Baldwin suppressed, perhaps in an agreement with HUAC) and working to clear the ACLU name. HUAC raids beginning in 1939, passage of the Smith Act in 1940 and state laws banning the Communist Party from the ballot served to increase concern about totalitarian organizations. In response to these growing concerns, the ACLU in 1940 adopted a policy barring Communist Party members from official positions in the organization, leading to the ouster of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn from the board and to the resignations of several others, including Harry Ward.
The 1930s witnessed an expansion of ACLU affiliates to St. Louis, San Francisco, Seattle, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Iowa, Indiana and Texas. By 1939 five affiliates had paid staff. At the New York headquarters, the ACLU hired its first staff counsel in 1941.
Civil Liberties During Wartime
Following the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, the ACLU organized a conference on Civil Liberties in the National Emergency which was keynoted by Attorney General Frank Murphy. Lucille Milner wrote popular articles on conscientious objection and freedom of speech during wartime which carried the ACLU message to the general public. When war came in 1941, President Roosevelt pledged to continue constitutional freedoms even in a state of war, a policy generally followed except for one glaring exception.
Immediately after Pearl Harbor Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 which created military zones to be run by the War Relocation Authority to intern Japanese aliens and Japanese-American citizens. The ACLU denounced the order as contrary to liberty and due process and as racially-motivated since it applied only to Japanese.
While western affiliates sought test cases, an activity made difficult by Japanese acquiescence, the ACLU split on the question of what were the limits of government power during wartime. A resolution approved the President's order in principle, but provided four technical bases for bringing challenges to the order. Similarly the ACLU voted not to oppose a peacetime draft that included good protections for conscientious objectors (although the law did not provide political grounds for objection) and adopted the Seymour resolution not to defend individuals charged with sedition when no due process violations were involved. The national organization's willingness to compromise on civil liberties issues during wartime led to considerable opposition from affiliates, especially those on the West Coast. Eventually the ACLU handled two leading cases involving the internment camps, Korematsu and Hirabayashi.
The ACLU also created new committees during the war, a National Committee on Conscientious Objectors headed by Ernest Angell who met with President Roosevelt on the matter, a Committee Against Racial Discrimination chaired by Pearl Buck, and a Committee on Discrimination Against Women led by Dorothy Kenyon. ACLU's strong support for civil rights led to a split with some of its old labor allies. ACLU supported a bill of rights for union members and the growing movement for democracy in trade unions. The ACLU also aided the NAACP in cases that overthrew the white primary and restrictive covenants, and even took on a test of the segregated draft in the Winfred Lynn case which the NAACP would not accept.
Post-War Problems
The ACLU's long-standing debate regarding its relationship to the Communist Party in many ways limited its response to the Cold War anti-Communist crusade that followed the war. One faction on the board, led by Norman Thomas and Morris Ernst, was strongly anti-Communist. Others, led by Arthur Garfield Hays, Osmond Fraenkel and Walter Gellhorn, opposed any attempt to restrict political beliefs and associations.
The basic elements of the post-war attack on civil liberties were already in place even before the war began: HUAC, the Smith Act, state loyalty oaths and FBI surveillance of individuals and organizations. When President Truman issued E.O. 9835 establishing the federal loyalty program, the ACLU opted for quiet court tests and lobbying of Attorney General Tom Clark instead of a public opposition to the basic tenets of the order.
Baldwin, an activist throughout his life, had associations with many of the organizations found on the Attorney General's list of Communist Party affiliates, so he protected himself by regular attacks on the Communist Party which only served to limit his ability to oppose the internal security crusade. The ACLU sought to protect the rights of HUAC witnesses rather than take on HUAC itself.
The Smith Act cases which Judge Harold Medina presided over in New York led to convictions of the defendants for membership in the Communist Party. Moveover, Medina's contempt citations put a chill on lawyers who might have defended clients. When the Supreme Court's Dennis decision sustained the Smith Act, a dissident group of ACLU members, led by Corliss Lamont, left to form an Emergency Civil Liberties Committee to pay more attention to trial-level support rather than waiting for the appeals process which had been ACLU's forte. The ACLU also refused to pursue allegations of FBI abuse, often providing an active apology for the Bureau.
Even in this era, the ACLU remained a small organization with a membership of fewer than 10,000. Of its affiliates, only Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles had paid staff. In response to the need for a stronger national organization, to the criticism of the Lamont faction, and to the perception that the ACLU had not responded effectively to the attacks of the anti-Communist crusade, in 1948 a Special Committee on Policy Planning under Walter Gellhorn urged that the ACLU become less involved in litigation and provide more public education. The Committee named civil rights and the fight against censorship as the key issues for the future and downplayed old causes like church-state questions and defense of minority parties. Finally, the Committee recommended that Roger Baldwin be relieved from executive responsibilities and given an ambassadorial role of speaking, writing and maintaining relations with other organizations. As a result of this recommendation, Roger Baldwin retired as executive director in 1950, at the close of the organization's first thirty years which is the period covered by this microfilm edition.
Collection History
Acquisition
Gifted to the New York Public Library by Albert DeSilver, the Director of the National Civil Liberties Bureau in 1920. The New York Public Library deaccessioned the papers in 1953 to Princeton’s Firestone Library. In 1976, the records were transferred to the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library.
Material relating to a 1912 Industrial Workers of the World free speech trial in San Diego, California is included in the collection. As it precedes the creation of the ACLU, its origin is unknown.
Custodial History
The initial donation to NYPL consisted of 10 volumes of canvas-backed post-bound original documents and clippings pasted on paper that were numbered starting with 1 for each year. NYPL removed the originals from the post-bindings, and pasted them into scrapbooks. This process increased the number of volumes and split materials that were originally described as a single volume. Volumes were renumbered with a combination of volume and letter designations (for example, 595A and 595B).
Access and Use
Access Restrictions
Collection is open for research use.
Use Restrictions
Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. Permission to publish material from the collection must be requested from the University Archivist. Copyright is held by the Trustees of Princeton University.
Preferred Citation
American Civil Liberties Union Records: Subgroup 1, The Roger Baldwin Years; 1917-1950, Public Policy Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.
Find More
Topics
- American history/20th century
- American politics and government
- Legal history
- Public policy/20th century
- World War I
- World War II
Subject Terms
- 20th entury
- Access control
- African Americans
- Aliens
- Amnesty
- Anti-Communist movements
- Assemby, Right of
- Cases
- Censorship
- Church and state
- Citizen suits (Civil procedure)
- Civil rights
- Civil rights movements
- Civil rights workers
- Communism
- Conscientious objectors
- Constitutional law
- Discrimination
- Draft resisters
- Due process of law
- Equality before the law
- Freedom of association
- Freedom of information
- Freedom of movement
- Freedom of religion
- Freedom of speech
- Freedom of the press
- History
- Indians of North America
- Labor laws and legislation
- Labor unions
- Law
- Law and legislation
- Lawyers
- Legal aid
- Legal services
- Legal status, laws, etc
- Loyalty oaths
- Minnesota
- Minorities
- New Jersey
- Patterson
- Police power
- Political questions and judicial power
- Privacy, Right of
- Race discrimination
- Sex discrimination
- Strikes and lockouts
- Subversive activities
- Teaching, Freedom of
- Textile workers
- Trials
- United States
Genre Terms
Other Finding Aids
The ACLU Card Index (1917-1946), which is located in card catalogs in the lobby of the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, lists materials in this collection first chronologically and then by subject or name. Please use the Card Index Subjects list and Names list (individuals are found under the heading "people" in the index) at the end of this finding aid to identify relevant index terms and the years in which they appear. The cards provide reel (r), volume, and page numbers for each subject. (This index has several limitations. Names are not indexed exhaustively, and material from 1946-1950 is not included. To gain access to these years, please use the Reel Contents and Series lists.)
American Civil Liberties Union Records dating from 1947 have been divided in to six series; each series is described in a separate finding aid. These finding aids are listed below:
Series 1: American Civil Liberties Union Records: Organizational Matters Series, 1947-1995.
Series 2: American Civil Liberties Union Records: Project Files Series, 1964-1979.
Series 3: American Civil Liberties Union Records: Subject Files Series, 1921-1990.
Series 4: American Civil Liberties Union Records: Legal Case Files Series, 1933-1990.
Series 5: American Civil Liberties Union Records: Printed Materials Series, 1917-1995.
Series 6: American Civil Liberties Union Records: Audiovisual Materials Series, circa 1920-1995.
Alternative Form Available
Microfilm of these volumes is available at the Mudd Manuscrip Library. Additionally, digital images of volumes 1-71, 73-125, 127-135, and 138-141 are available online as downloadable PDFs. Please see the Reel and Contents List below for access to electronic copies.
Contents and Arrangement
Arrangement
This finding aid provides two different arrangements for the materials. Series 1: Reel Contents - American Civil Liberties Union Microfilm are in the order that the materials are physically arranged: in the volumes first by format (correspondence or newspaper clippings) and then chronologically. Series 2: Clippings and Series 3: Correspondence provide an alternate arrangement of these sames materials, organized by subject. Therefore, locations of materials in this list are spread throughout the collection.
- Series 1 - Academic Freedom--Clippings, 1917-1950
- Subseries 2 - Censorship--Clippings, 1928-1950, 1933-1946, 1949-1950
- Subseries 3 - Chronological--Clippings, 1947-1948
- Subseries 4 - Federal Departments--Clippings, 1920-1923, 1925-1946, 1949-1950
- Subseries 5 - General--Clippings, 1912, 1917-1946, 1949-1950
- Subseries 6 - Legislation--Clippings, 1917-1923, 1926-1946, 1949-1950
- Subseries 7 - States--Clippings, 1919-1946, 1949-1950
- Subseries 8 - Academic Freedom--Correspondence, 1918-1919, 1921, 1924-1926, 1928-1934, 1936-1941, 1943-1950
- Subseries 9 - Censorship--Correspondence, 1917-1921, 1930-1950
- Subseries 10 - Conscientious Objectors--Correspondence, 1917-1921, 1927, 1940-1942, 1944-1950
- Subseries 11 - Federal Departments--Correspondence, 1924-1950
- Subseries 12 - Federal Legislation--Correspondence, 1919-1921, 1926-1950
- Subseries 13 - General--Correspondence, 1917-1924, 1926-1929, 1931-1950
- Subseries 14 - Injunctions--Correspondence, 1931-1935, 1937-1939
- Subseries 15 - Labor and Liberal Organizations--Correspondence, 1921, 1931-1950
- Subseries 16 - Nelles Papers, Walter--Correspondence, 1920-1926
- Subseries 17 - New York City Committee--Correspondence, 1936-1950
- Subseries 18 - Organizational Matters--Correspondence, 1917-1950
- Subseries 19 - Pennsylvania Civil Liberties Committee and Philadelphia Branch--Correspondence, 1930-1933
- Subseries 20 - State Legislation--Correspondence, 1928-1929, 1935-1941, 1943-1947, 1949-1950
- Subseries 21 - States--Correspondence, 1917-1950
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