Category Archives: American Civil Liberties Union History

Comic Books, Censorship, and Moral Panic

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By Zachary Bampton ’20

Previously on this blog we covered the educational and political aspirations of comic books in American popular culture. Keen interest in comics as teaching tools–or as propaganda–reflected a public awareness of the power of the medium. However, Americans did not always receive comics well. In the 1950s, creative expression came into the crosshairs of public officials wishing to tamp down on juvenile delinquency. Library book banning and film censorship occurred throughout the country. With regard to comics, many felt concerned by the disturbing and deviant subject matter, particularly in “horror” or “crime” comics. With materials selected from the American Civil Liberties Union Records (MC001), we will chronicle the move towards self-censorship by the Comics Magazine Association of America (CMAA) and the creation of the Comics Code Authority (CCA).

Into the 1950s, community and national organizations voiced concerns over subversive content found in comic books. In the words of Reverend Thomas J. Fitzgerald of Chicago, depictions of “crime, disrespect for law, rape, infidelity, perversion, etc.” troubled adults who thought of the impact on children (American Civil Liberties Union Records (MC001), Box 773, Folder 25). While comics across the board received criticism, a certain genre stood out from the rest, aptly referred to as “crime comics” or horror comics.

“The Tormented,” July 1954. American Civil Liberties Union Records (MC001), Box 768, Folder 1.

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Comics as Education, 1950s-1980s

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By Zachary Bampton ’20

From the 1950s onward, comics and their bright colors, bold drawings, and interesting stories have captivated a young American demographic. However, their popularity drew in other eyes, too. Civic and political groups took notice of this market audience and attempted to reach them by utilizing the medium as a teaching tool. The goal was education, not entertainment. Pulled from our Public Policy Papers and University Archives here at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, these comics demonstrate a mass market approach to education by unconventional means.

Materials for an unpublished comic book found in the Fund for the Republic Records (MC059) provide insight into the motivations and decision-making process for these publishers. In 1955, Dan Barry proposed a comic to Fund for the Republic provisionally titled “Our Civil Liberties, Their Meaning, and the Threats They Face”. Noting the “70 million regular readers” of comics as well as the disparity between 43% of the “newspaper public” reading the editorial versus 83% reading the comic strips, Barry articulated the potential and “great need for free-minded liberal material in this powerful medium”.

“Heroes of the Highway,” 1952. This comic book served as proof of concept to Fund for the Republic for the 1955 proposal. Fund for the Republic Records (MC059), Box 93, Folder 21.

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The American Civil Liberties Union and the Fight Against Japanese American Internment

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This Sunday marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of Executive Order 9066, which authorized the mass expulsion of Japanese Americans from the west coast of the United States. Specifically, the order allowed the Secretary of War to designate certain regions as “military areas” from which anyone could be expelled at the discretion of the Secretary or his commanders. The order, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt about ten weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, was defended by the federal government as a wartime protection measure.

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Arthur Garfield Hays echoed the opinion of others in the organization when he initially wrote to a peer about his tendency to approve the actions of the government during crises; however, he soon after came to the conclusion that “we are safer in the long run if the government recognizes constitutional limitations, even in time of war.” Despite similar debates between board members, the ACLU quickly responded to the executive order by issuing several statements to Roosevelt and to John L. DeWitt, the commanding general of the Western Defense Command. The ACLU’s statements condemned Executive Order 9066 as discriminatory, pointing not only to the blatant prejudice against Japanese Americans, but also to the legal inequality that the order bolstered. In particular, the ACLU referred to the fact that the House Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration (also known as the Tolan Committee), which conducted hearings in February and March 1942, recommended that German and Italian “alien residents” be afforded the chance to attest their loyalty to the United States before civilian boards– a recommendation that the committee did not extend to Japanese Americans.

First page of an ACLU letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt in reaction to Executive Order 9066. American Civil Liberties Union Records (MC001), Subgroup 1, Volume 2394.

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The Right to Love: Loving v. Virginia and the American Civil Liberties Union

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The film Loving, based on the Loving v. Virginia case, is now in expanded release in U.S. theaters.

When Mildred and Richard Loving were married in June 1958, twenty-four states still had anti-miscegenation laws. For this reason, Mildred, a black woman who was also of Rappahannock and Cherokee Indian descent, and Richard, a white man, were married in Washington, D.C. instead of their native Virginia, where both of their families had resided for generations. After they married, the Lovings settled in Central Point, Virginia. They were unaware that they would soon find themselves involved in one of the most significant legal battles of the civil rights movement.

On July 11, 1958, after receiving an anonymous tip, local authorities issued warrants charging the Lovings with attempting to evade Virginia’s ban on interracial marriages. The Lovings were indicted by a grand jury in Caroline County, Virginia and pled guilty in January 1959. They were convicted under Section 20-58 of the Virginia Code, which made it illegal for interracial couples to marry out of state with the intention of returning, and sentenced under Section 20-59, which declared interracial marriage a felony offense and punishable by between one to five years in prison. Initially, both Mildred and Richard were sentenced to one year in prison, but the sentences were suspended on the condition that they leave Virginia and not return together for twenty-five years.

Cover page of the Supreme Court brief filed by the ACLU. American Civil Liberties Union Records: Subgroup 2, Project Files Series (MC001.02.02), Box 672, Folder 8

Cover page of the Supreme Court brief filed by the ACLU in the Loving case. American Civil Liberties Union Records: Subgroup 2, Project Files Series (MC001.02.02), Box 672, Folder 8

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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.

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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.

 

 

 

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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.

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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.”

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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.

 

 

 

 

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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