The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an organization founded
to defend equal rights and civil liberties for all Americans, including the
rights to free speech, due process, and freedom of the press.
Founding in 1920
The ACLU has its roots in World War I (1914–18). ACLU founder and
long-time president Roger N. Baldwin (1884–1981) strongly opposed
the war. He joined the antiwar organization American Union Against
Militarism (AUAM) in New York in 1917 and quickly became its most
determined crusader. After the war, on January 20, 1920, Baldwin and
some of his AUAM associates established a new group they called the
American Civil Liberties Union.
Baldwin immediately changed the focus of the ACLU from antiwar
issues to civil liberties. The ACLU’s sole commitment was to the Bill of
Rights, the amendments made to the U.S. Constitution regarding liberties, such as freedom of religion, speech, and press, and the right to privacy, to assemble peacefully, and to petition the government.
The ACLU was founded during a period known as the red scare of
1920, when an overwhelming fear of Communists was sweeping the nation. Communists are people who believe in an economic or political
system in which property is owned collectively by all members of society, and labor is organized for the common good. In 1919, the U.S. government launched nationwide raids to round up and detain alleged
radicals, who it claimed were part of a Communist plot to destroy the
country. The ACLU, still a tiny new organization, worked tirelessly in
the courts to stop the government from violating civil liberties, going to
court to fight its deportation of foreigners for their political beliefs and
its attempts to stop trade unions from organizing.
Famous cases
In 1925, Baldwin wanted to test the powers of his organization on the
issue of free speech. He was particularly concerned about a Tennessee
law that prohibited teaching the theory of evolution in schools. The theory of evolution is a scientific explanation of how changes may have happened in populations of animals, including human beings, from one generation to the next, due to genetic modifications. The people responsible for the anti-evolution laws believed that human development was
the work of God and should not be explained to students in scientific
terms. Baldwin believed the prohibition against teaching a scientific theory was a violation of the right of freedom of speech. He sought out a
teacher willing to break Tennessee’s anti-evolution law so ACLU lawyers
could take the issue to court. John T. Scopes (1900–1970) volunteered,
and thus began a trial that came to be called the Scopes monkey trial,
because of the evolutionary theory that human beings evolved from apes.
Although it lost the case, the ACLU gained notoriety and respect from
the trial.
Since the Scopes trial, the ACLU has been involved in many of the
most famous controversies in American history, playing a role in an estimated 80 percent of the landmark Supreme Court cases related to individual rights. During World War II (1939–45), the ACLU challenged
the internment of Japanese Americans, who were forced to leave their
homes and businesses and live in confinement in government camps
simply because of their ancestry. ACLU lawyers argued a case against religious prayers in public schools,
resulting in the Supreme Court ruling that the practice was unconstitutional. The organization defended many protesters of the Vietnam War
(1954–75). In 1977, it defended the right of the Nazi Party to hold a
demonstration in the predominantly Jewish town of Skokie, Illinois.
ACLU and African American civil rights
From its beginnings, the ACLU made the issue of racial justice a major
part of its program. It established a close working relationship with the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP). In the 1940s, ACLU leaders developed a proposal for a broad
legal attack on institutionalized segregation, which is the separation of
blacks and whites in public places. It eventually became the basis for
NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall’s (1908–1993) successful legal
fight against segregation and led to the landmark Brown v. Board of
Education ruling in 1954. The ACLU was also a supporting force in the
African American civil rights movement of the 1960s.
On a number of issues, however, the ACLU and African American
civil rights activists have disagreed. On First Amendment (freedom of
speech) grounds, the ACLU opposed measures designed to restrict the
activities of racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. It also opposed efforts by the NAACP to have the racist film Birth of a Nation banned in
a number of cities. Its position was that the First Amendment guaranteed freedom of speech and assembly to all groups and that authorities
could not make distinctions between groups based on their personal beliefs.
The twenty-first century
In 2005, the ACLU had five hundred thousand members and handled
about six thousand court cases. Supported through membership dues,
tax-deductible contributions, and grants, the ACLU’s program consists
mainly of litigation (legal proceedings), lobbying (attempts to influence
government activities and policies), and public education.
Throughout nearly ninety years of activism, the ACLU remains
committed to the fundamental principle that the defense of civil liberties
must be universal, or extend to everyone. At times this has resulted in
harsh criticism and the loss of some core supporters. The ACLU’s defense of the freedom of speech of racist and anti-Semitic groups, such as
the Klansmen and American Nazis, deeply angered some of its supporters. The ACLU’s position that civil liberties should not be suspended in
the interest of civil defense was not popular in the first fearful days after
the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Most
historians agree, though, that the ACLU’s insistence on upholding the
Bill of Rights has remained remarkably evenhanded and courageous
amid the changing currents of public opinion.