A few years ago, University archivist Dan Linke was leading an undergraduate history seminar through Princeton’s collection of papers of the American Civil Liberties Union, housed in Mudd Library. After showing the students documents relating to Brown v. Board of Education, Linke shifted gears and pulled out a folder labeled Gideon v. Cochran, the early stage of the case that would become Gideon v. Wainwright and establish a defendant’s right to an attorney even if he could not afford one.
Near the top was a two-page letter, printed in soft pencil on lined prison stationery. Postmarked July 3, 1962, and sent from “State Prison Raiford, Florida” to Mel Wulf in the ACLU’s national office in Manhattan, it was signed “Clarence Gideon”: “Being refused a attorney was just one of the factors involved there is several more of them,” he wrote to Wulf. More…
