Lamont

Corliss Lamont was a humanist philosopher and socialist who served as a director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from 1932 to 1954. Born in Englewood, New York in 1902, Lamont was educated at Harvard University, graduating in 1924. He earned a PhD. in philosophy from Columbia University in 1932. In 1928 Lamont married Margaret Hayes Irish, with whom he had four children. They remained married until the 1960s. In 1932 (the same year he began working with the ACLU), Lamont visited the Soviet Union and would become chairman of the Friends of the Soviet Union. Four years later, Lamont was a founder and financial supporter of Marxist Quarterly magazine. Beginning in 1947, Lamont taught a course at Columbia on Naturalistic Humanism. He would later donate land along the Hudson River to Columbia University. During the 1960s, Lamont was active in protesting U.S. involvement in Cuba and Vietnam through his writing and other campaigns. Lamont's suit against the Postmaster General for interfering with his mail under a 1962 anti-propaganda mail law targeting communist political material ultimately went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1965 (Lamont v. Postmaster General), which invalidated the law. In 1962, Lamont married Dr. Helen Boyden Lamb, a research analyst who was active in protesting the Vietnam War. She died in 1975. In 1986 he married Beth Keehner, to whom he remained married until his death in 1995. With Beth Lamont, Lamont produced a television program espousing their humanist beliefs. Lamont authored many books, among them The Peoples of the Soviet Union (1946); The Philosophy of Humanism, (1949); Soviet Civilization (1952); Freedom Is As Freedom Does: Civil Liberties in America (1956); A Lifetime of Dissent (1988).