Category Archives: American Civil Liberties Union History

ACLU Court Document Summons King’s Last Days

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A recent ref­er­ence inquiry brought to light a doc­u­ment within the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union (ACLU) Records that pro­vides a record of one of the events that took place in the days sur­round­ing the assas­si­na­tion of Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968 in Mem­phis, Tennessee.

Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., with Dean of the Chapel Ernest Gor­don, at Prince­ton in 1960. His­tor­i­cal Pho­to­graph Col­lec­tion, Indi­vid­u­als Series.

W.J. Michael Cody, an attor­ney in Mem­phis, who, along with his firm, rep­re­sented King and other defen­dants in a case brought by the City of Mem­phis, inquired whether we had doc­u­ments related to these events in the ACLU Records.

The court case at issue con­cerned the City of Mem­phis’ desire to pre­vent a march in sup­port of strik­ing san­i­ta­tion workers—the city wished to ban the demon­stra­tion because an ear­lier san­i­ta­tion work­ers’ march (held on March 28, 1968) had become dis­or­derly and resulted in riot­ing and the use of aggres­sive law enforce­ment mea­sures includ­ing mace and tear gas. King wished to lead another, peace­ful march for the cause, but the City of Mem­phis obtained a tem­po­rary restrain­ing order to pre­vent it from occur­ring (Cody, p. 700).

Cody, a for­mer pres­i­dent of the West Ten­nessee Chap­ter of the ACLU, was con­tacted by ACLU Gen­eral Coun­sel Mel Wulf, and asked whether his firm, Burch Porter & John­son, would rep­re­sent King in a case to lift the restrain­ing order and allow the march to pro­ceed legally. On the evening of April 3, in the midst of the defense’s prepa­ra­tions for the case, King gave his well-known “I’ve Been to the Moun­tain­top” speech to the san­i­ta­tion work­ers and their fam­i­lies at the Mason Tem­ple (Cody, p. 700).  Accord­ing to the doc­u­ment below from the ACLU records, the hear­ing was held on the day of April 4, and the court decided that the march could pro­ceed under a set of con­di­tions that would help to ensure its order­li­ness.  That evening, King was assas­si­nated at the Lor­raine Motel.

The three-page court doc­u­ment from the ACLU Records, filed April 5, 1968, indi­cates that the Coun­sel for the City changed its posi­tion after the tragic event and joined with the defen­dants in their efforts to allow the march to pro­ceed with the pro­vi­sions listed.

Opinion and Temporary Injunction (page 1), ACLU Records, Subgroup 2, Box 656, Folder 2

Opin­ion and Tem­po­rary Injunc­tion (page 1), ACLU Records, Sub­group 2, Box 656, Folder 2

Opinion and Temporary Injunction (page 2), ACLU Records, Subgroup 2, Box 656, Folder 2

Opin­ion and Tem­po­rary Injunc­tion (page 2), ACLU Records, Sub­group 2, Box 656, Folder 2

Opinion and Temporary Injunction (page 3), ACLU Records, Subgroup 2, Box 656, Folder 2

Opin­ion and Tem­po­rary Injunc­tion (page 3), ACLU Records, Sub­group 2, Box 656, Folder 2

Cody recounts the com­plex and com­pelling events of this period in Mem­phis in his arti­cle “King at the Moun­tain Top: The Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., Mem­phis, April 3–4, 1968,” The Uni­ver­sity of Mem­phis Law Review, Vol. 41, pages 699–707.

 

The Birth of the Civil Liberties Bureau and The National Civil Liberties Bureau,1917–1919

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by: Pro­fes­sor Samuel Walker
School of Crim­i­nal Justice
Uni­ver­sity of Nebraska at Omaha

This is the first part in a series that was intro­duced ear­lier.

The fight for civil lib­er­ties dur­ing World War I orig­i­nated with the Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau (CLB), formed as a com­mit­tee of the Amer­i­can Union Against Mil­i­tarism (AUAM) imme­di­ately after the United States declared war on April 6, 1917. Led by Crys­tal East­man and Roger Bald­win, the Bureau lob­bied Con­gress and the Wil­son admin­is­tra­tion regard­ing pro­vi­sions for con­sci­en­tious objec­tors in the Selec­tive Ser­vice Act and pro­vided advice to young men fac­ing the draft. Lead­ers of the par­ent AUAM, how­ever, soon thought these activ­i­ties would alien­ate the admin­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent Woodrow Wil­son and as a result the Bureau became a sep­a­rate orga­ni­za­tion, the National Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau in the fall of 1917. In 1918 Mil­i­tary Intel­li­gence began inves­ti­gat­ing the NCLB for vio­la­tions of the Espi­onage Act, and finally on August 30, 1918 the Jus­tice Depart­ment raided the NCLB office and seized its records. (See the doc­u­ments in the topic, The National Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau and the Woodrow Wil­son Admin­is­tra­tion.) Pros­e­cu­tion appeared pos­si­ble, but never occurred. In Jan­u­ary 1920 the NCLB was recon­sti­tuted as the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union (ACLU). (See the doc­u­ments in the topic, The Found­ing of the ACLU.)

Reel7/Vol.69/p.345–351

 

 

 

 

 

The AUAM pam­phlet, Con­cern­ing Con­scrip­tion, circa May-June 1917, presents its views regard­ing selec­tive ser­vice and con­sci­en­tious objec­tion to par­tic­i­pa­tion in war, while Con­gress was debat­ing the selec­tive ser­vice bill. The prin­ci­pal issues involved the cri­te­ria for eli­gi­bil­ity as a con­sci­en­tious objector.

Reel3/Vol.16/p.3

The AUAM hand­bill, circa May-June 1917, while Con­gress was still debat­ing the selec­tive ser­vice bill. It attacks the idea of a draft and argues for a com­pletely vol­un­tary sys­tem for mil­i­tary service.

 

 

 

Reel7/Vol.16/p.4

Reel7/Vol.16/p.5

These three April 1917 let­ters between the AUAM and Sec­re­tary of War New­ton D. Baker reflect the close and cor­dial rela­tions between mem­bers of the Wil­son admin­is­tra­tion and the civil lib­er­tar­i­ans in the early months of the war. These indi­vid­u­als knew each other from their pre-war pro­gres­sive reform activ­i­ties. Baker, for exam­ple, had been a reform mayor of Cleve­land, Ohio. The AUAM mem­o­ran­dum here sets forth its views on what cat­e­gories of peo­ple should be eli­gi­ble for con­sci­en­tious objec­tor sta­tus. The cor­dial rela­tions ended in the spring of 1918 when Mil­i­tary Intel­li­gence and some Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cials con­cluded that the NCLB was vio­lat­ing the Espi­onage Act.

 

This May 15–17, 1917 cor­re­spon­dence with Frank Walsh, a Kansas City, Mis­souri, attor­ney dis­cusses a pos­si­ble legal chal­lenge to the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of the draft. Walsh was a promi­nent Pro­gres­sive Era reformer and advo­cate of the labor move­ment. Some anti­war and paci­fist lead­ers regarded the draft as a vio­la­tion of the Thir­teenth Amend­ment. The Supreme Court even­tu­ally rejected this argument.

 

 

 

 

 

The AUAM pam­phlet, Con­sti­tu­tional Rights in War-Time (May 1917) rep­re­sents the organization’s first for­mal state­ment of the range of civil lib­er­ties issues at the out­set of the war.

 

 

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The National Civil Liberties Bureau and the Woodrow Wilson Administration

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by: Pro­fes­sor Samuel Walker
School of Crim­i­nal Justice
Uni­ver­sity of Nebraska at Omaha

This is part of a series that was intro­duced ear­lier.

Roger Bald­win and Crys­tal East­man began their work with the Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau con­fi­dent that they had good rela­tions with offi­cials in the Woodrow Wil­son admin­is­tra­tion. Many of these peo­ple knew each other from their pre-war work on Pro­gres­sive Era reform. Begin­ning in early 1918, how­ever, Mil­i­tary Intel­li­gence and the Jus­tice Depart­ment began to regard the Bureau’s work as a vio­la­tion of the Espi­onage Act, on the grounds that it encour­aged draft age young men to either not reg­is­ter for the draft or refuse to par­tic­i­pate if drafted. The doc­u­ments in this sec­tion reveal the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the rela­tion­ship between the Bureau and the Wil­son admin­is­tra­tion and the final break. Par­tic­u­larly shock­ing to mod­ern per­spec­tives, Bald­win tried to main­tain the rela­tion­ship by coop­er­at­ing with the gov­ern­ment, even to the point of offer­ing to cease cer­tain actions and also by pro­vid­ing con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion to gov­ern­ment offi­cials. In the end, the Jus­tice Depart­ment raided the Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau office (along with the offices of many other orga­ni­za­tions) on August 30, 1918.

Reel2/Vol.15/p.4

These let­ters from Roger Bald­win to Fred­er­ick Kep­pel, Third Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of War and New­ton D. Baker, Sec­re­tary of War, June 1917, offers his assur­ance of his eager­ness to coop­er­ate with the Wil­son admin­is­tra­tion. Kep­pel had been a Dean at Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity, and Baker had been a noted reform mayor of Cleve­land, Ohio. Bald­win states that “We are entirely at the ser­vice of the War Department.”

Reel2/Vol.15/p.7L

This cor­dial let­ter of July 7, 1917 from Sec­re­tary of War Baker to Roger Bald­win indi­cates the degree of trust and coop­er­a­tion that pre­vailed in the early months of the war.

 

 

 

 

Reel2/Vol.15/p.23R

This cor­dial let­ter to Roger Bald­win of Sep­tem­ber 27, 1917 from Felix Frank­furter, an offi­cial in the War Depart­ment, thanks Bald­win and other civil lib­er­tar­i­ans for their help­ful efforts and expresses con­fi­dence that the con­cerns of the Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau will be resolved. Frank­furter was not directly involved in any civil lib­er­ties issues dur­ing the war, and did not object to the government’s actions. He became a mem­ber of the ACLU National Com­mit­tee in 1920 and was appointed a Jus­tice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1939.

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Rodger Baldwin: From The Civil Liberties Bureau to the American Civil Liberties Union

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by: Pro­fes­sor Samuel Walker
School of Crim­i­nal Justice
Uni­ver­sity of Nebraska at Omaha

 

This is the first part in a series that was intro­duced ear­lier.

Roger Bald­win was direc­tor of the National Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau (NCLB) from its found­ing as an orga­ni­za­tion inde­pen­dent of the Amer­i­can Union Against Mil­i­tarism (AUAM) in Octo­ber 1917 until his res­ig­na­tion in Sep­tem­ber 1918. His res­ig­na­tion fol­lowed a U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment raid on the NCLB offices on August 30, 1918, but was pri­mar­ily prompted by his plan to refuse to sub­mit to the draft. Selec­tive ser­vice had been extended to men up to the age of 40, and Bald­win at age 36 was eli­gi­ble. He was sub­se­quently con­victed of vio­lat­ing the selec­tive ser­vice act and sen­tenced to prison. Upon leav­ing prison in the sum­mer of 1919 he began the work of reor­ga­niz­ing the NCLB into a per­ma­nent civil lib­er­ties defense orga­ni­za­tion. The ACLU was sub­se­quently founded in Jan­u­ary 1920. The doc­u­ments in this sec­tion relate to these events. Par­tic­u­larly impor­tant is Baldwin’s state­ment to the judge upon being sen­tenced to prison, which was widely cir­cu­lated and helped to estab­lish Baldwin’s national rep­u­ta­tion (Doc­u­ment # 3).

Reel 14/Vol. 108/p. 195L

With this Sep­tem­ber 6, 1918 let­ter, Roger Bald­win resigns as direc­tor of the National Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau. The let­ter refers to the U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment raid on the NCLB offices on August 30th and the pos­si­bil­ity of the pros­e­cu­tion of NCLB lead­ers under the Espi­onage Act. The pri­mary rea­son for his res­ig­na­tion, how­ever, was the fact that he had bee served with a draft notice and planned to refuse to sub­mit to mil­i­tary ser­vice. Selec­tive Ser­vice had recently been extended to men up to the age of 40, and he was now eligible.

Reel14/Vol.108/p198R

Reel14/Vol.108/p199R

The Sep­tem­ber 30, 1918 Min­utes of the NCLB Direct­ing Com­mit­tee dis­cuss Baldwin’s sit­u­a­tion with the draft and the organization’s response (Agenda Item # 4). The min­utes also cover the NCLB’s evic­tion from its office at 70 Fifth Avenue, which was prob­a­bly due to gov­ern­ment or pub­lic pres­sure. The land­lord, Mr. Plimp­ton, is a rel­a­tive of George Plimp­ton who was a noted edi­tor and author in the 1950s and 1960s.

Reel7/Vol69/p379-386

The Indi­vid­ual and the State(November 1918) is a reprint of Roger Baldwin’s state­ment to Judge Julius Mayer on Octo­ber 30, 1918, upon being sen­tenced to prison for refus­ing to sub­mit to the draft. Baldwin’s state­ment imme­di­ately attracted atten­tion, was widely quoted and reprinted, and estab­lished Baldwin’s national rep­u­ta­tion as a per­son of con­science. This ver­sion was reprinted and dis­trib­uted by the NCLB. It was reprinted dur­ing World War II when the issue of con­sci­en­tious objec­tion to par­tic­i­pa­tion in war reap­peared. This pam­phlet also includes Judge Mayer’s response to Bald­win and pro­nounce­ment of the sentence.

Reel14/Vol.108/p.204

These Min­utes of a spe­cial meet­ing of the NCLB Direct­ing Com­mit­tee on Octo­ber 31, 1918, imme­di­ately after Baldwin’s sen­tenc­ing, record the dis­cus­sion of pos­si­bly pub­lish­ing Baldwin’s speech to the court. The com­mit­tee decided not to, and hoped that his friends would pub­lish it pri­vately. The NCLB changed its mind and pub­lished and dis­trib­uted the speech.

Reel5/Vol.44/p.225–6

Reel5/Vol .44/p.230

The first let­ter, from the NCLB let­ter to its mem­bers, Feb­ru­ary 21, 1919, includes a let­ter from Roger Bald­win, who was then in prison for refus­ing to sub­mit to the draft. In addi­tion to dis­cussing the pend­ing peace­time sedi­tion bill and amnesty for con­sci­en­tious objec­tors in prison, he declares that he would not accept any per­sonal par­don that would allow him to be released from prison early. The sec­ond let­ter, undated, is from Bald­win to Albert De Sil­ver object­ing to any efforts to obtain a par­don for him.

Reel 14/Vol. 108/pp. 368R

Reel 14/Vol. 108/pp. 369R

These let­ters from Albert De Sil­ver to Bald­win on July 12, 1919 and July 13(not clear) dis­cuss plans for a wel­come home party fol­low­ing his release from prison, to be held at the apart­ment of Nor­man Thomas.

Reel14/Vol.108/p.370

The for­mal invi­ta­tion to the wel­come home party for Bald­win from Nor­man Thomas, July 17, 1919.

Reel14/Vol.108/p.373

The famous rad­i­cal Eliz­a­beth Gur­ley Flynn accepts invi­ta­tion to the wel­come home party for Bald­win, July 18, 1919. Bald­win and Flynn were close col­leagues in these years. In 1940, how­ever, they had a falling out when Bald­win engi­neered the adop­tion of an ACLU pol­icy bar­ring mem­bers of total­i­tar­ian orga­ni­za­tions from serv­ing in offi­cial ACLU posi­tions, forc­ing her expul­sion from the ACLU Board of Directors.

Reel 14/Vol. 108/pp. 366L

The caterer’s bill for the wel­come home party for Roger Bald­win at Nor­man Thomas’s apartment.

 

 

NOTE: For doc­u­ments on Roger Baldwin’s activ­i­ties regard­ing the found­ing the ACLU in late 1919 and early 1920 see the doc­u­ments under the topic “The Found­ing of the ACLU.”

For more of the col­lec­tion that has been dig­i­tized you may browse the Find­ing Aid.

The American Civil Liberties Union’s Early History in Documents

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Today, we begin a series of blog entries in a new cat­e­gory Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union His­tory cov­er­ing the ALCU’s early his­tory.  Writ­ten by Samuel Walker, a pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus in the School of Crim­i­nal Jus­tice at the Uni­ver­sity of Nebraska at Omaha and the author of the only com­pre­hen­sive his­tory of the ACLU, each entry con­tains many dig­i­tized doc­u­ments along with Walker’s com­men­tary.  These doc­u­ments are part of 20 reels of micro­film that we dig­i­tized recently with Walker’s gen­er­ous sup­port and can be accessed here.

A note on the cita­tions to the ACLU Records:  The loca­tion of each doc­u­ment is indi­cated by the micro­film reel num­ber, the orig­i­nal Vol­ume num­ber in the ACLU Records, and the page number(s) within each vol­ume. Locat­ing par­tic­u­lar doc­u­ments should be fairly easy, although it will often require mov­ing back and forth between reels and volumes.

Doc­u­ments on par­tic­u­lar top­ics are often scat­tered among dif­fer­ent micro­film reels and vol­ume num­bers. This is believed to be a result of the dis­or­ga­ni­za­tion of the records that occurred when the U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment raided the offices of the National Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau on August 30, 1918.

Despite the dis­or­ga­ni­za­tion of the doc­u­ments, how­ever, most are grouped together in a log­i­cal fash­ion. As a result, read­ers who access a doc­u­ment related to the found­ing of the National Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau (NCLB), for exam­ple, will find related doc­u­ments on that sub­ject nearby, and these doc­u­ments may be of inter­est to readers.

A dis­claimer: the text is Pro­fes­sor Walker’s inter­pre­ta­tion of ACLU his­tory and some will not agree with it. This is the nature of his­tor­i­cal schol­ar­ship, but we encour­age you to com­ment and, where pos­si­ble, cite other ACLU doc­u­ments that you find online. 

The founding of the American Civil Liberties Union, 1920

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by: Pro­fes­sor Samuel Walker
School of Crim­i­nal Justice
Uni­ver­sity of Nebraska at Omaha

This is the first part in a series that was intro­duced ear­lier.

World War I ended on Novem­ber 11, 1918, but the repres­sion of civil lib­er­ties con­tin­ued unabated. The most well-known event was the so-called “Palmer Raids,” which actu­ally involved two sets of fed­eral mass arrests of alleged rad­i­cals, in Novem­ber 1919 and early Jan­u­ary 1920. The lead­ers of the NCLB began think­ing about trans­form­ing the orga­ni­za­tion into a per­ma­nent one devoted to the defense of civil lib­er­ties. The key per­son was Roger Bald­win, who was con­victed of vio­lat­ing the Selec­tive Ser­vice Act in Octo­ber 1918 and sent to prison. After his release in the sum­mer of 1919, he made a cross coun­try trip to work as an indus­trial laborer. Upon his return to New York in late 1919 he began the plan­ning for the new orga­ni­za­tion, which was estab­lished as the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union (ACLU) in Jan­u­ary 1920. 

Reel16/Vol.120/p.19–20

This undated and unsigned mem­o­ran­dum, Sug­ges­tions for Reor­ga­ni­za­tion of the National Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau, was prob­a­bly writ­ten by Roger Bald­win (see his ini­tials in the upper right hand cor­ner), prob­a­bly in late 1919. It rep­re­sent his thoughts on reor­ga­niz­ing the National Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau into a per­ma­nent civil lib­er­ties orga­ni­za­tion. Note that in the first para­graph the pri­mary focus is on work­ing peo­ple (“the cause we serve is labor”). No name for a per­ma­nent orga­ni­za­tion is sug­gested at this time. When the ACLU is offi­cially con­sti­tuted, it is evi­dent that dis­cus­sions about the agenda for a national orga­ni­za­tion had expanded to include a broader range of civil lib­er­ties issues.

Reel14/Vol.108/p.188

Reel14/Vol.108/p.189

Reel14/Vol.108/p.190

This undated mem­o­ran­dum by Roger Bald­win was prob­a­bly writ­ten in early Jan­u­ary 1920 and sum­ma­rizes the work of the NCLB from Octo­ber 1917 to Jan­u­ary 1920. It was undoubt­edly writ­ten as part of the dis­cus­sions to recon­sti­tute the NCLB into a per­ma­nent civil lib­er­ties organization.

Reel16/Vol.120/p.7

The deci­sion to cre­ate the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union is recorded in these Min­utes of the Con­fer­ence to Reor­ga­nize the National Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau, Jan­u­ary 12, 1920. Note the con­cern (Item #3) about includ­ing the names of Roger Bald­win and Eliz­a­beth Gur­ley Flynn because they had been pros­e­cuted and con­victed of fed­eral crimes dur­ing the war. The objec­tions were rejected, and their names were included. The first action by the new ACLU was to protest the pro­posed peace­time sedi­tion law being con­sid­ered by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (Item #7). The 1918 sedi­tion law had expired with the end of the war, but the pro­posed peace­time law did not pass.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Extensive list of books that used Mudd’s collections now available

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One of the major rea­sons for keep­ing his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments is to pro­vide access to them for research use, and schol­ars travel from around the world to the Mudd Man­u­script Library to read our doc­u­ments in order to write their books and arti­cles. For the first time, with the help of Google Books, we have cre­ated bib­li­ogra­phies for vol­umes writ­ten using our col­lec­tions. Over the past three decades, there have been more than 30 books writ­ten using sources from the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Archives and over 300 books from our 20th Cen­tury Pub­lic Pol­icy Papers. These files are linked off of our Con­duct­ing Research page from Mudd’s home­page.

Both lists are impres­sive for their scope and help demon­strate how our hold­ings can be exploited—in the best sense of the word.

If you know of oth­ers that should be listed, please send us a mes­sage at . We’ll be glad to update the list.