|
ACLU
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1920. ACLU affiliates are active in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The budget of the ACLU in 2024 was $383 million. The ACLU provides legal assistance in cases where it considers civil liberties at risk. Legal support from the ACLU can take the form of direct legal representation or preparation of ''amicus curiae'' briefs expressing legal arguments when another law firm is already providing representation. In addition to representing persons and organizations in lawsuits, the ACLU lobbies for policy positions established by its board of directors. The ACLU's current positions include opposing the death penalty; supporting same-sex marriage and the right of LGBTQ+ people to adopt; supporting reproductive rights such as birth control and abortion rights; eliminating discrimination against women, minorities, and LGBTQ+ people; decarceration in the Uni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Romero
Anthony D. Romero (born July 9, 1965) is an American lawyer who serves as the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. He assumed the position in 2001 as the first Latino and openly gay man to do so. Early life and education Romero was born in Bronx, New York city on July 9, 1965, to Puerto Rican parents Demetrio and Coralie Romero. Romero spent the initial years of his childhood growing up in a public housing project in the Bronx. He was the oldest of his siblings. His father worked as a houseman at a large Manhattan hotel and was repeatedly turned down for a more financially lucrative job as a banquet waiter, being told that it was because he did not speak English well enough. Demetrio Romero later decided to seek assistance from the attorney of the labor union he belonged to, hoping to file a grievance against his employer. He won the case, which allowed for him to seek out better paying work and later allowed for the family to improve their standard of livi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roger Nash Baldwin
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. Life and work Early years Baldwin was born in Wellesley, Massachusetts, the son of Lucy Cushing (Nash) and Frank Fenno Baldwin. 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 in St. Louis, 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 er ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deborah Archer
Deborah N. Archer is an American civil rights lawyer and law professor. She is Margaret B. Hoppin Professor of Clinical Law at New York University School of Law. She also directs and founded thCommunity Equity Initiativeat NYU Law and directs the Law School's Civil Rights Clinic. In January 2021, she was elected president of the American Civil Liberties Union, becoming the first African American to hold the position in the organization’s history. Early life and education The daughter of immigrants from Jamaica, Archer was raised in Windsor, Connecticut. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in government from Smith College in 1993 and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1996. At Yale, she won the Charles G. Albom Prize. Career After graduating from Yale, Archer clerked for Judge Alvin Thompson of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, and the following year (1997 to 1998) was a Marvin M. Karpatkin legal fellow at the ACLU. Archer was assistant coun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morris Ernst
Morris Leopold Ernst (August 23, 1888 – May 21, 1976) was an American lawyer and prominent attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In public life, he defended and asserted the rights of Americans to privacy and freedom from censorship, playing a significant role in challenging and overcoming the banning of certain works of literature (including James Joyce's '' Ulysses'' and Radclyffe Hall's '' The Well of Loneliness'') and in asserting the right of media employees to organize labor unions. He also promoted an anti- communist stance within the ACLU itself, and was a member of the President's Committee on Civil Rights. Background Morris Leopold Ernst was born in Uniontown, Alabama, on August 23, 1888, into a Jewish family.Langer“These 16 Jewish Heroes Rescued Books From The Jaws Of The Censors” The Forward, Sep 22, 2019 His father, Carl Ernst, had been born in Plzeň, Bohemia (in what is now the Czech Republic), and had worked as a peddler and shopkee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter Nelles
Walter Nelles (April 21, 1883 – April 1, 1937) was an American lawyer and law professor. Nelles is best remembered as the co-founder and first chief legal counsel of the National Civil Liberties Bureau and its successor, the American Civil Liberties Union. In this connection, Nelles achieved public notice for his legal work on behalf of pacifists charged with violating the Espionage Act during World War I and in other politically charged civil rights and constitutional law cases in later years. Background Walter Nelles was born April 21, 1883, in Leavenworth, Kansas, the son of George Thomas Nelles, a civil engineer.Solon DeLeon with Irma C. Hayssen and Grace Poole (eds.), ''The American Labor Who's Who.'' New York: Hanford Press, 1925; pg. 170. Nelles attended the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, in preparation for an Ivy League collegiate education. Upon graduation from Exeter, Nelles enrolled in Harvard University, from which he graduated in 1905 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert DeSilver
Albert DeSilver (August 27, 1888 – December 7, 1924) was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). DeSilver graduated from Yale in 1910, where he was a member of Skull and Bones, and then earned a law degree at Columbia Law School (1913) (editor Columbia Law Review). Though he was being groomed for a place in New York's legal establishment, he resigned his law practice in 1918 to become one of the founding members of the National Civil Liberties Bureau (later known as the American Civil Liberties Union) to devote himself full-time to defending conscientious objectors, other citizens, and immigrants against persecution under new laws such as the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. During World War I, DeSilver used his own war bonds to post bail for defendants in free speech Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censors ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (August 7, 1890 – September 5, 1964) was an American labor leader, activist, and feminist who played a leading role in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Flynn was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women's rights, birth control, and women's suffrage. She joined the Communist Party USA in 1936 and late in life, in 1961, became its chairwoman. She died during a visit to the Soviet Union, where she was accorded a state funeral with processions in Red Square attended by more than 25,000 people. Background Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was born on August 7, 1890, in Concord, New Hampshire, the daughter of Annie (Gurley) and Thomas Flynn. The family moved in 1900 to New York, where she was educated at the local public schools. Her parents introduced her to socialism. When she was only 15 years old, she gave her first public speech, "What Socialism Will Do for Women", at the Harlem Socialist Club. After this ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Garfield Hays
Arthur Garfield Hays (December 12, 1881 – December 14, 1954) was an American lawyer and champion of civil liberties issues, best known as a co-founder and general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union and for participating in notable cases including the Sacco and Vanzetti trial. He was a member of the Committee of 48 and a contributor to ''The New Republic''. In 1937, he headed an independent investigation of an incident in which 19 people were killed and more than 200 wounded in Ponce, Puerto Rico, when police fired at them. His commission concluded the police had behaved as a mob and committed a massacre. Early life and education Arthur Garfield Hays was born on December 12, 1881, in Rochester, New York. Three months earlier, the death of James A. Garfield had installed Chester A. Arthur in the U.S. presidency. His father and mother, both of German Jewish descent, belonged to prosperous families in the clothing manufacturing industry. In 1902, he graduated from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jane Addams
Laura Jane Addams (September 6, 1860May 21, 1935) was an American Settlement movement, settlement activist, Social reform, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, philosopher, and author. She was a leader in the history of social work and women's suffrage in the United States, women's suffrage. In 1889, Addams co-founded Hull House, one of America's most famous settlement houses, in Chicago, Illinois, providing extensive social services to poor, largely immigrant families. Philosophically a "radical Pragmatism, pragmatist", she was arguably the first woman public philosopher in the United States. In the Progressive Era, when even presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson identified themselves as reformers and might be seen as social activists, Addams was one of the most prominent reformers. An advocate for world peace, and recognized as the founder of the social work profession in the United States, in 1931 Addams became the first American woma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter (November 15, 1882 – February 22, 1965) was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1939 until 1962, advocating judicial restraint. Born in Vienna, Frankfurter immigrated with his family to New York City at age 12. He graduated from Harvard Law School and worked for Henry L. Stimson, the U.S. Secretary of War. Frankfurter served as Judge Advocate General during World War I. Afterward, he returned to Harvard and helped found the American Civil Liberties Union. He later became a friend and adviser of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. After Benjamin N. Cardozo died in 1938, Roosevelt nominated Frankfurter to the Supreme Court. Given his affiliations and alleged radicalism, the Senate confirmed Frankfurter's appointment only after its Judiciary Committee required him to testify in 1939, a practice that became routine in the 1950s. His relations with colleagues were strained by ideological and perso ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crystal Eastman
Crystal Catherine Eastman (June 25, 1881 – July 28, 1928) was an American lawyer, antimilitarist, feminist, socialist, and journalist. She was a leader in the fight for women's suffrage, a co-founder and co-editor with her brother Max Eastman of the radical arts and politics magazine '' The Liberator,'' co-founder of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and co-founder in 1920 of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 2000, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. Early life and education Crystal Eastman was born in Marlborough, Massachusetts, on June 25, 1881, the third of four children. Her oldest brother, Morgan, was born in 1878 and died in 1884. The second brother, Anstice Ford Eastman, who became a general surgeon, was born in 1878 and died in 1937. Max was the youngest, born in 1883. In 1883, their parents, Samuel Elijah Eastman and Annis Bertha Ford, moved the family to Canandaigua, New York. In 1889, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
LGBT Adoption In The United States
Until 2017, laws related to LGBTQ+ couples adopting children varied by state. Some states granted full adoption rights to same-sex couples, while others banned same-sex adoption or only allowed one partner in a same-sex relationship to adopt the biological child of the other. On 31 March 2016, Federal District Court struck down Mississippi's ban on same-sex couple adoptions. On June 26, 2017, the United States Supreme Court reversed an Arkansas Supreme Court ruling that allowed a law listing parents by gender on birth certificates to stand. The new SCOTUS ruling allowed both same-sex spouses to be listed on birth certificates. These court rulings made adoption by same-sex couples legal in all 50 states. In 2022, Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act which requires that states respect marriage licenses of same-sex couples as long as the marriage was valid in the state in which it was performed. This act repeals the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act which defined marriage as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
