Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union / Robert C. Cottrell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cottrell, Robert C., 1950- author.

Series:

Columbia Studies in Contemporary American History

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Baldwin, Roger N. (Roger Nash), 1884-1981.

Baldwin, Roger N.

American Civil Liberties Union--History.

American Civil Liberties Union.

Civil rights--United States--Biography.

Civil rights.

Civil rights--United States--History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (272 pages)

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, 2000.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Roger Nash Baldwin's thirty-year tenure as director of the ACLU marked the period when the modern understanding of the Bill of Rights came into being. Spearheaded by Baldwin, volunteer attorneys of the caliber of Clarence Darrow, Arthur Garfield Hays, Osmond Frankel, and Edward Ennis transformed the constitutional landscape. Company police forces were dismantled. Antievolutionists were discredited (thanks to the Scopes Trial). Censorship of such works as James Joyce's Ulysses was halted. The Scottsboro Boys and Sacco and Vanzetti were defended. The right of free speech for communists and Ku Klux Klansmen alike was upheld, and the foundations were laid for an end to school segregation.Robert Cottrell's magnificent book recaptures the accomplishments and contradictions of the complicated man at the center of these events. Driven, vain, frugal, and tempestuous, America's greatest civil libertarian was initially also a staunch defender of Communist Russia, deferred to the U.S. government over the internment of Japanese Americans, and openly admired J. Edgar Hoover and Douglas MacArthur. His personal relationships were equally complex. Spanning a hundred years from the late 1800s through Baldwin's death in 1981, this riveting biography is an eye-opening view of the development of the American left.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. Growing Up in Wellesley Hills

2. The Inevitable Harvard and Beyond

3. The Progressive as Social Worker

4. The Civic League

5. Early Civil Liberties Career

6. The National Civil Liberties Bureau

7. The United States v. Roger Baldwin

8. Prison Life

9. An Unconventional Marriage

10. The American Civil Liberties Union

11. The ACLU Under Suspicion

12. Turning to the Courts

13. International Human Rights

14. A European Sabbatical

15. Free Speech and the Class Struggle

16. From the United Front to the Popular Front

17. The Home Front

18. Controversies on the Path from Fellow Traveling to Anticommunism

19. Civil Liberties During World War II

20. “Quite a Dysfunctional Family”

21. The Cold War, the Shogun, and International Civil Liberties

22. A Very Public Retirement in the Age of Anticommunism

23. A Man of Contradictions

24. Matters of Principle

25. The Public Image

26. Traveling Hopefully

Notes

Collections, Oral Histories, and Interviews

Bibliography

Subject Index

Index of Names

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780231534031

0231534035

OCLC:

767569020