American Civil Liberties Union

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), nonpartisan organization devoted to the preservation and extension of the basic rights set forth in the U.S. Constitution. Founded (1920) by such prominent figures as Jane Addams, Helen Keller, Judah Magnus, and Norman Thomas, the ACLU grew out of earlier groups that had defended the rights of conscientious objectors during World War I. Its program is directed toward three major areas of civil liberties: inquiry and expression, including freedom of speech, press, assembly, and religion; equality before the law for everyone, regardless of race, nationality, sex, political opinion, or religious belief; and due process of law for all. Its most significant and successful activities have involved court tests of important civil liberties issues. Since its founding, the ACLU has participated directly or indirectly in almost every major civil liberties case contested in American courts. Among these are the so-called Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee (1925), the Sacco-Vanzetti case (1920s), the federal court test (1933) that ended the censorship of James Joyce's Ulysses, and the landmark Brown v. Board of Education (1954) school desegregation case. In the late 1970s the ACLU defended the right of a neo-Nazi group to march in Skokie, Ill. The ACLU has about 275,000 members in its state organizations. The national office, located in New York City, also supports lobbying and educational activity on behalf of civil liberties issues.

Bibliography: See J. L. Gibson and R. D. Bingham, Civil Liberties and Nazis (1985).

American Civil Liberties Union ACLU a non-profit organization formed in 1920 that sought to ensure the freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. One of its earliest targets was unfair treatment against antiwar propagandists. During World War II it stood almost alone in denouncing the federal government's roundup and internment in camps of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans. In 1989 it was successful in defeating attempts by Congress to ban flag-burning, defending it as a form of free speech; this had been a common activity during protests of the Vietnam War.

American Civil Liberties Union. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), founded in 1920, is a nonprofit organization devoted to the defense of individual rights under the U.S. Constitution. The ACLU was an outgrowth of the National Civil Liberties Bureau, founded (1917) to provide assistance to conscientious objectors (COs) and to defend the free speech rights of critics of U.S. involvement in World War I. Roger Baldwin, founder and executive director of the ACLU from 1920 to 1950, was a pacifist as well as a civil libertarian, as were many other early ACLU leaders. Defending the right of individuals to criticize the government, even during wartime, became the cornerstone of the ACLU's approach to civil liberties.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the organization opposed compulsory military training in public schools and colleges. During World War II, the ACLU helped establish the National Committee on Conscientious Objectors to provide assistance to COs. It also provided legal assistance in Supreme Court cases challenging the president's order directing the military to relocate and intern Japanese Americans on the West Coast.

During the Vietnam War, the ACLU assisted COs and defended the free speech rights of opponents of the war. In 1970, it declared the U.S. military involvement unconstitutional on the grounds that Congress had not officially declared war. The ACLU and its New York State affiliate provided legal counsel in several cases challenging the legality of the war. The organization strongly supported the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which sought to limit the presidential power to send U.S. military forces into combat without congressional approval.
[See also Conscientious Objection.]

Bibliography

Leon Friedman and and Burt Neuborne , Unquestioning Obedience to the President, 1972.
Samuel Walker , In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU, 1990.

Samuel Walker