.19th January 1920: Foundation of the American Civil Liberties Union - HiPo > .
In the aftermath of the First World War, fear of far-left extremism saw the United States enter a period of reactionary politics. Concerned that the increasingly powerful trade unions might attempt to replicate the Russian Revolution of 1917, and spurred on by fear of the anarchist bombings that were becoming more common, the Department of Justice under Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer began conducting raids against suspected leftists.
The Palmer Raids saw the arrest of around 3,000 people, a number of whom experienced unconstitutional and illegal actions against them that included entrapment, arrest without a warrant, and detention in often terrible conditions. In direct response to these violations a group of prominent individuals that included Roger Baldwin of the National Civil Liberties Bureau, Crystal Eastman, and Helen Keller created the American Civil Liberties Union with the expressed objective to ‘defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person by the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution and laws of the United States’.
Formally established on 19 January 1920, the ACLU came to national prominence as a result of 1925’s ‘Monkey Trial’ in which it financed a legal challenge to Tennessee’s newly-signed Butler Act, which prohibited teachers in state-funded schools from teaching human evolution. Although the 24-year-old defendant, substitute science teacher John T. Scopes, lost the case it propelled the ACLU into the public eye. The organization now boasts more than 1.2 million members and continues to provide legal support where individual rights and liberties are threatened.
The Palmer Raids saw the arrest of around 3,000 people, a number of whom experienced unconstitutional and illegal actions against them that included entrapment, arrest without a warrant, and detention in often terrible conditions. In direct response to these violations a group of prominent individuals that included Roger Baldwin of the National Civil Liberties Bureau, Crystal Eastman, and Helen Keller created the American Civil Liberties Union with the expressed objective to ‘defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person by the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution and laws of the United States’.
Formally established on 19 January 1920, the ACLU came to national prominence as a result of 1925’s ‘Monkey Trial’ in which it financed a legal challenge to Tennessee’s newly-signed Butler Act, which prohibited teachers in state-funded schools from teaching human evolution. Although the 24-year-old defendant, substitute science teacher John T. Scopes, lost the case it propelled the ACLU into the public eye. The organization now boasts more than 1.2 million members and continues to provide legal support where individual rights and liberties are threatened.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.