Tag Archives: American Civil Liberties Union

American Civil Liberties Union Records Processing Completed

Posted on by
1

The Mudd Library is pleased to announce that the final two series of the third sub­group of Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union (ACLU) records have been processed, and that the entire col­lec­tion has been addressed is now avail­able to the pub­lic. These mate­ri­als join ACLU records long held at the Mudd Library: The Roger Bald­win Years, 1917–1950 and Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union Records 1947–1995. As a whole, this col­lec­tion doc­u­ments the civil lib­er­ties organization’s work in areas includ­ing civil rights, chil­dren and women’s rights, free­dom of speech (and all First Amend­ment ques­tions), due process, the right to pri­vacy, and church-state sep­a­ra­tion issues, and this third sub­group cov­ers the years between 1975 and 2000 pre­dom­i­nantly. The records are of vital his­tor­i­cal and cul­tural impor­tance to the nation, and we are grate­ful that the work on these records was sup­ported by a grant from the National His­tor­i­cal Pub­li­ca­tions and Records Com­mis­sion (NHPRC).

Founded in 1920, the ACLU’s mis­sion is “to defend and pre­serve the indi­vid­ual rights and lib­er­ties guar­an­teed to every per­son in this coun­try by the Con­sti­tu­tion and laws of the United States.” The group has been inte­gral in myr­iad land­mark court cases since its incep­tion, and the col­lec­tion of new mate­ri­als housed at Mudd con­sists, notably, of records from the Repro­duc­tive Free­dom Project, the Women’s Rights Project, the Robert Bork Supreme Court nom­i­na­tion hear­ings, the Iran-Contra affair, and Texas v. John­son (the 1990 flag-burning case). The newly avail­able records also include over 300 boxes from the ACLU’s South­ern Regional office, which han­dled many impor­tant civil rights cases

Adri­ane Han­son, who man­aged the pro­cess­ing of the new ACLU mate­ri­als, began in June 2010, and with the help of sev­eral Prince­ton stu­dents, she inven­to­ried and processed 2,500 lin­ear, the sin­gle largest and fastest pro­cess­ing project in Mudd Library’s his­tory. Mudd Library’s entire ACLU col­lec­tion, which is its largest and most used, now spans about 4,200 lin­ear feet.

For more infor­ma­tion, read the Prince­ton Alumni Weekly’s arti­cle on these new records.

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

Posted on by
Reply
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

Posted on by
4

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. 

Additional ACLU Collections Available

Posted on by
aclu-logo-23841307_std1

There are now 3 more Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union find­ing aids avail­able online and acces­si­ble to the public:

Series 2: Project Files
The Project Files series con­tains the records of twelve of the ACLU’s projects, which each addressed an area of civil lib­er­ties vio­la­tions. Project records typ­i­cally con­sist of case files, research files, project pub­lic­ity cor­re­spon­dence. The best doc­u­mented projects are the Children’s Rights Project Women’s Rights Project, to a lesser extent the Arts Cen­sor­ship Project, Cap­i­tal Pun­ish­ment Project, Repro­duc­tive Free­dom Project.
Series 3: Sub­ject Files
The Sub­ject Files series con­tains arti­cles, reports, court doc­u­ments, and other mate­ri­als col­lected by the ACLU dur­ing the course of their work. The main sub­jects are drugs, home­less­ness, and Supreme Court nom­i­na­tions, largely of Robert Bork. Other sig­nif­i­cant sub­jects in the series include cam­paign finance, dis­crim­i­na­tion, envi­ron­men­tal equity and racism, school pen­sion plans, state con­sti­tu­tions, and welfare.
Series 4: Legal Case Files
The Legal Case Files series doc­u­ments the ACLU’s involve­ment in lit­i­ga­tion, rang­ing from files col­lected on cases for research pur­poses to records of cases they were sig­nif­i­cantly involved in. The records include doc­u­ments filed with the court, cor­re­spon­dence, lawyer’s notes, depo­si­tions and expert tes­ti­mony, tran­scripts of the tri­als, news­pa­per clip­pings, and research mate­ri­als on the back­ground of the case and legal precedent.
The Legal Case Files series con­tains records about over 1,500 cases, with the major­ity being files col­lected on non-ACLU cases for research on the broad range of civil lib­er­ties which the ACLU inves­ti­gates. Com­mon sub­jects include the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state, pub­lic edu­ca­tion, racial and sex­ual dis­crim­i­na­tion, injus­tice in the legal sys­tem, ille­gal sur­veil­lance and search, and pro­tect­ing the free­dom of speech and expres­sion, as well as pol­i­tics and vot­ing, infor­ma­tion access and pri­vacy, fair employ­ment and health care prac­tices, and immi­gra­tion. Cases which are par­tic­u­larly well doc­u­mented include Car­los Rivera v. John Row­land about the pub­lic defender sys­tem in Con­necti­cut and three cases about pub­lic edu­ca­tion: Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion, Charlet v. Leg­is­la­ture of Louisiana, and Harper v. Hunt.

For more infor­ma­tion about the ACLU col­lec­tions check out our recent post:
http://blogs.princeton.edu/mudd/2012/03/american-civil-liberties-union-records-new-series-available.html

–Adri­ane Hanson

American Civil Liberties Union Records: First New Series Available

Posted on by
aclu-logo-23841307_std1
Researchers can start using some newly open Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union Records ahead of schedule!

Series 1: Orga­ni­za­tional Mat­ters is now open for research by using the fol­low­ing find­ing aid. http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/x346d492c

This series is part of an ongo­ing two-year project funded by the National His­tor­i­cal Pub­li­ca­tions and Records Com­mis­sion to process 2,500 lin­ear feet of ACLU records, largely from 1970 to 2000. Each series will be made avail­able as pro­cess­ing is com­pleted, with the entire project sched­uled to end on July 1, 2012. Look for Series 2: Project Files and Series 3: Sub­ject Files to be made avail­able in April.

Series 1: Orga­ni­za­tional Mat­ters doc­u­ments the inner work­ings of the ACLU. These records take you behind the scenes as indi­vid­u­als at the national office, regional offices, and affil­i­ates nego­ti­ate the ACLU’s offi­cial posi­tion on emerg­ing civil lib­er­ties issues. Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Ira Glasser’s papers shed light into the com­pli­cated man­age­ment of one of the nation’s pre­em­i­nent civil lib­er­ties orga­ni­za­tions. Within the cor­re­spon­dence, meet­ing min­utes, and posi­tion papers, you can see the ACLU shape strate­gies to try cases, com­bat restric­tive leg­is­la­tion, and mobi­lize pub­lic opin­ion to sup­port the ACLU’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion. At 472 lin­ear feet, this series holds a wealth of poten­tial for any­one look­ing at a late 20th cen­tury civil lib­er­ties issue or the U.S. policy-making process.

The pub­lic is wel­come to visit the Mudd Library to con­duct research within these mate­ri­als. For more infor­ma­tion on the ACLU col­lec­tions, search our find­ing aids, and you can always get help by email­ing us at .

–Adri­ane Hanson