The Civil Rights subseries (11.76 linear feet) contains legal, administrative, and correspondence files relating to the ACLU's involvement in the protection of individual liberties. The subseries is organized chronologically with various headings for each year (though not all headings appear in every year) and contains newspaper clippings, correspondence, memoranda, and background papers. While the bulk of materials deals with the rights of African-Americans, several files contain material related to the liberties of Jews, Mexican-Americans, aliens, and the disabled.

The modern civil rights movement began with the 1954 Supreme Court decision to desegregate public schools, Brown v. Board of Education. As with many other important cases of the time, the ACLU filed an amicus curiae brief in the Brown case (see Series 4, Legal Case Files). The Brown decision triggered a maelstrom of opposition from conservative white politicians, particularly in the South. Hence, many of the files from the 1950s and even the 1960s are related to the unwillingness of various school districts to grant African-American students the rights which were guaranteed by the Brown decision. In addition to public schools, university and parochial school issues are also documented.

The ACLU took an extremely active role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Its direct involvement in sit-ins and other protests harkened back to the organization's intense activity in defense of workers' rights during the 1920s and 1930s. As the protest movement grew increasingly more radical--from the Freedom Riders early in the decade to the Black Panther Movement of the late 1960s--the ACLU's support for the doctrine of equal protection under the law did not wane, nor did the Union restrict its support to any one area of the far-flung civil rights quest. This subseries documents the ACLU's fight to gain equal access for all citizens in employment in both the public and private sector (and details the internal debate concerning affirmative action and quota-based hiring), housing, public accommodations (including restaurants, businesses, community swimming pools, and local parks), transportation, and at the polls (including fair representation in Congressional re-districting).

Documents under the housing heading detail discriminatory practices by neighborhoods and builders attempting to keep African-Americans out of their communities through restrictive covenants, or mortgage or insurance restrictions. The interracial issues heading contains background information and correspondence related to local and state miscegenation ordinances. This subseries also documents changes in federal and state legislation concerning civil rights; most notable are folders related to the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The private organizations heading includes background documents and correspondence concerning discriminatory practices, as well as many documents from private organizations that supported the ACLU's fight for the protection of civil liberties, including the American Jewish Congress, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

The peaceful and violent protests that marked the civil rights movement are documented as well in this subseries under the protest movements heading, which contains notable papers and records of Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, the Alabama bus boycott, the sit-in movement, the Freedom Riders, and the Black Panther organization.