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ACLU celebrates 80th birthday January 19
January 18, 2000
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the nation's oldest and largest civil liberties organization, turns 80 years old tomorrow.
The organization will celebrate locally with a birthday cake and candles at 12 p.m. at its state office: 3000 Biscayne Blvd., Suite 215, Miami, FL 33137.
The ACLU has come a long way from its non-glamorous start in 1920, when a roomful of activists, including Roger Baldwin, Crystal Eastman, Helen Keller, Albert De Silver and others, banded together to organize the nationwide defense of the Bill of Rights.
At the time of its founding, peace activists were languishing in jail for distributing anti-war literature, foreign-born residents suspected of political radicalism were subject to summary deportations, racial segregation was the law of the land, sex discrimination was firmly institutionalized and the U.S. Supreme Court had yet to uphold a single free speech claim under the First Amendment.
The ACLU immediately set to work, and in 80 years its success can be measured in some of the landmark cases defining freedom in America. From the defense of public schoolteacher John Scopes for teaching evolution, to the fight against the U.S. Customs Service's effort to ban James Joyce's Ulysses, to the ending of legalized racial segregation, to the securing of women's right to abortion, the ACLU has been involved in every major civil rights and civil liberties struggle for nearly a century.
For more information about the ACLU's 80th birthday celebration, please contact the ACLU of Florida.
