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America's Need AMERICA’S NEED: A NEW BIRTH OF F’REEDlOM 34th Annual Report - American Civil Liberties Union July I, 1953-June 30, 1954 AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION 170 Fifth Avenue New York 10, N. Y. Price SO@ AMERICA’S NEED: A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM 34fh Annual Report - American Civil Liberfies Union July I, 1953-June 30, 1954 AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION 170 Fifth Avenue New York 10, N. Y. Price SO@ )4 56 .pJ’7 lSSiL TABLE OF CONTENTS P “FRESH START ON A ROCKY ROAD” BY PATRICK MURPHY MALIN ........ 3 I. FREEDOM OF BELIEF, SPEECH AND ASSOCIATION 9 Censorship and Pressure Directed Against the Printed Word, the Stage and Screen, and the Airwaves . 9 The Principle of Diversification ........ 17 Freedom of Meetings and Speech, Correspondence, and Movement; Right to a License ....... 18 Lobbying and Petition .......... 23 National Security: Safeguard and Restriction ... 25 Freedom in Education ........... 38 Religion and Conscience .......... 46 II. JUSTICE UNDER LAW ............ 53 The Police ............... 53 Wiretapping .............. 57 Procedure in the Courts .......... 58 Procedure in the Federal Executive Departments . 64 Procedure in Legislative Hearings ....... 72 III. EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW ........ 77 Equality in Relation to Race, Creed and National Origin 77 Labor ................. 86 Self-Government ............. 91 Women ................ 93 IV. INTERNATIONAL CIVIL LIBERTIES ...... 95 V. BALANCE SHEET OF COURT CASES ...... 100 VI. STRUCTURE AND PERSONNEL ........ 113 VII. MEMBERSHIP AND FINANCES ........ 120 2 FRESH START ON A ROCKY ROAD PATRICK MURPHY MALIN Executive Director The 34th Annual Report of the American Civil Liberties Union out- lines the main developmentsin the field of civil liberties, and the work of the ACLU, between July 1, 1953 and June 30, 1954. This intro- duction is a commentary, rather than a summary of that history; it is written on, November 22, as close as possible to publication day, and deals with foreground events. It can profitably be read against the background of my introduction to our 1951-53 report. In the months since the middle of 1953, civil liberties first were pushed downhill, and then rallied to make a fresh start in climbing a rocky road. The years aheadare likely to require many such fresh starts, but we should now-taking heart from some recent successes-con- centrate on climbing as far as we can before the next reversal.* There can be no dispute about which recent successis the biggest. It is the 9-O decision of the United States Supreme Court on May 17 that segregation in public education is unconstitutional. An immense amount of thought and work, courage and forbearance, will still be needed in the specific application of the Court’s great pronouncement of principle; and there will be much nullification of various kinds for some years, not only in the Deep South but elsewhere. But this historic decision is already proving to be far more than a legal cap- stone; it is an incalculably valuable psychological release of addi- tional energy, channeled through all sorts of official and unofficial experiments toward ending anti-Negro discrimination-in employ- ment and housing and other areas, as well as education. Ninety-one years from the Emancipation Proclamation are an unconscionabletime, but we can now be more certain than ever that we are advancing steadily and rapidly. We know-and the world knows-that we can, by keeping everlastingly at it, put an end to organized discrimination before the end of the century. Another unanimous decision was registered this year. Six impeccable United States Senators (though one has somewhat reneged in the last fortnight) recommended that the Senate as a whole should censure Senator Joseph McCarthy, partly on the civil liberties ground of his * Read the leading article in the New York Times Magazine for Sunday, November 14, 1954: “To Insure the End of Our Hysteria,” by Pad1 G. Hoffman, chairman of the board of the Studebaker-Packard Corporation. 3 conduct toward General Zwicker as a witness before the Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations. It is too early to tell the exact terms in which the Senate will act on that recommendation, or by what margin of votes; and it is much too early to rejoice that another demagogue has been finally removed from public life, or even reduced to impotence. But the gods (aided by Edward R. Murrow!) have begun to destroy him whom they first made mad. The nation will be a long time paying for the damage, at home and abroad, which the Senate and the White House, the party machines and the people as a whole, too long allowed or even encouraged. But it is significant that, wherever the issue of Senator McCarthy was squarely joined in the Congressional elections just held, the candidate opposed to him was victorious. Fairness in legislative inquiry has taken a new lease on life. Third among the recent successes which deserve special mention here is something less immediately tangible, but perhaps potentially most vital of all. The counter-attack by those who believe in variety and freedom throughout our institutions of formal education, against the assorted orthodoxies which seek to dictate educational content and method and personnel, has begun to be noticeably effective. Some in- stitutions are still stupid and cowardly enough to cancel their participa- tion in debates on the diplomatic recognition of Communist China, and many teachers still keep quiet about anything controversial for fear of losing their jobs. But it was the foundations which won in the fiasco of Congressman Reece’s committee investigation of them. And you can scarcely pick up a mass-circulation magazine these days without finding an article which affords at least some support for freedom of inquiry and communication in public and private schools and colleges and universities. Columbia’s bicentennial year, celebrating “man’s right to knowledge and the free use thereof,” is also the year when the National Association of Manufacturers issued a pamphlet upholding many aca- demic freedom principles. Thus, it is not necessary to be a blind optimist in order to take more satisfaction from the last six months than from any corresponding period for several years. On the other hand, it is not necessary to be a confirmed pessimist in order to remain basically anxious. Because, for example, this is a year which has strikingly revealed the shape of many difficult things to come in intergroup relations, before we can bring about the end of organized discrimination. Look at the Trumbull Park public housing project in Chicago, where a host of policemen have been needed day and night for eighteen months to protect from violence the few Negro families who have bravely moved there and stayed there. It is going to take more than policing-more than any legislation, federal or state or municipal-really to solve such a problem. There is no complete substitute for people of every race 4 or creed or national origin learning to treat one another on the basis of individual quality. And this is especially difficult in the many cities and towns where there is not only a rapid growth, but a large inflow of set-in-their-way adults of various social groups. Those same cities and towns-big and diverse, new and changing, like the country as a whole-have also this year become more agitated than ever before about juvenile delinquency and related problems, whose solution is often sought in ways which threaten civil liberties. Our natural shock and outrage at teen-age-gang vandalism and murder too frequently trap us into urging the police and the courts toward whole- sale arrests and indiscriminate toughness, or into sanctioning the censor- ship of books and motion pictures and television programs. Those of us who believe in civil liberties as well as civic decency have our work cut out for us. We shall need to take every opportunity to join in pre- ventive and constructive measures which will reduce juvenile delin- quency without damaging due process and free speech. But we shall also on many occasions have to oppose even our best fellow-citizens, when their preoccupation with the risk of juvenile crime makes them forget that life is always a choice of risks, and that abandonment of due process and free speech inevitably produces far more harm than good. Finally, this is a year in which individual liberty has suffered a num- ber of conspicuous defeats in the name of national security. Robert Oppenheimer had his clearance withdrawn by the Atomic Energy Com- mission, and John Paton Davies was dismissed by the State Department -for alleged deficiencies in “character” or “judgment,” whose docu- mentation (so far as it has been publicly disclosed) leaves many of the most experienced and intelligent and patriotic men in the country pro- foundly skeptical as to whether justice was done. The Department of Justice accused Judge Youngdahl of bias in the Lattimore case, and yet did not appeal to the Supreme Court when he refused to disqualify himself! Republican campaigners rang the changes on a hodge-podge of security-risk statistics published by the Civil Service Commission. And liberal Democratic Senators, to fend off the charge of “twenty years of treason,” took the lead in passing the Communist Control Act, the latest legislative violation of the vital principle that nobody should be barred from legal acts simply because he can be punished if he commits illegal acts. The second session of the 83d Congress made other deep inroads into civil liberties, but it also served as a brake on bills proposed by the Administration which represented equally serious or worse threats. For example, the new immunity law, withdrawing under certain conditions the Fifth Amendment privilege of refusing to testify against oneself, may well be found unconstitutional; and even if found constitutional, it ignores the long-established need of a free society for protection against 5 any coerced confession.
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