On this date, August 26, 1981, one
of the ACLU Founders, Roger Nash Baldwin died of heart failure. We will post
information about him from Wikipedia.
Roger Nash Baldwin
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Roger Nash Baldwin (January 21, 1884 – August
26, 1981) was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU). He served as executive director of the ACLU until 1950.
Many of the ACLU's original landmark
cases took place under his direction, including the Scopes
Trial, the Sacco and Vanzetti murder trial, and its
challenge to the ban on James Joyce's Ulysses.
Baldwin was a well-known pacifist and author.
Biography
Early years
Roger Nash Baldwin was born in Wellesley, Massachusetts to Frank Fenno
Baldwin and Lucy Cushing Nash.
He earned his bachelor's and master's
degrees at Harvard University; afterwards, he moved to St. Louis
on the advice of Louis D. Brandeis. There he taught sociology at Washington University, worked as a social
worker and became chief probation
officer of the St. Louis Juvenile Court.
He also co-wrote Juvenile Courts and Probation with Bernard
Flexner at this time; this book became very influential in its era, and
was, in part, the foundation of Baldwin's national reputation.
Career
Baldwin was a member of the American Union Against Militarism
(AUAM), which opposed American involvement in World War
I, and spent a year in jail as a conscientious objector rather than submit to
the draft. After the passage of the Selective Service Act of 1917,
Baldwin called for the AUAM to create a legal division to protect the rights of
conscientious objectors.
On July 1, 1917, the AUAM responded by
creating the Civil Liberties Bureau (CLB), headed by
Baldwin. The CLB separated from the AUAM on October 1, 1917, renaming itself
the National Civil Liberties Bureau,
with Baldwin as director. In 1920, NCLB was renamed the American Civil
Liberties Union with Baldwin continuing as the ACLU's first executive director.
As director, Baldwin was integral to
the shape of the association's early character; it was under Baldwin's
leadership that the ACLU undertook some of its most famous cases, including the
Scopes
Trial, the Sacco and Vanzetti murder trial, and its
challenge to the ban on James Joyce's Ulysses.
Baldwin retired from the ACLU leadership in 1950. He remained active in
politics for the rest of his life; for example, he co-founded the International
League for the Rights of Man, which is now known as the International League for Human
Rights.
In St. Louis, Baldwin had been greatly
influenced by the radical social movement of the anarchist Emma
Goldman. He joined the Industrial Workers of the World. He
believed in democratic socialism.
In 1927, he had visited the Soviet
Union and wrote a book, Liberty Under the Soviets. Originally, at the
beginning of the ACLU, he had said, "Communism, of course, is the
goal." Later, however, as more and more information came out about Joseph
Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union, Baldwin became more and more
disillusioned with Soviet-style communism and called it "A NEW
SLAVERY" (capitalized in the original). He condemned "the inhuman
communist police state tyranny."
In the 1940s, Baldwin led the campaign
to purge the ACLU of Communist Party members.
In 1947, General Douglas
MacArthur invited him to Japan to foster the growth of civil liberties in that country.
In Japan, he founded the Japan Civil Liberties Union, and the
Japanese government awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun. In 1948, Germany
and Austria invited him for similar purposes. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences in 1951.
Later years
President
Jimmy Carter awarded Baldwin the Medal of Freedom on 16 January 1981.
Death and legacy
Baldwin died of heart
failure on August 26, 1981 at Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
INTERNET
SOURCE: http://acluleaks.com/uploads/VOL_17.pdf
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