35th Annual Report of the American Civil Liberties Union July 1, 7954 to June 30, 7955 AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION I70 Fifth Avenue New York IO, N. Y. Telephone: ORegon 5-5990 Price 504 ARTHUR GARFIELD HAYS Deccrnber 12, 1881 -D~ecember 14, 1954 35th Annud Report of fhe American Civil Liberties Union July 7, 1954 to June 30, 7955 AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION I70 Fifth Avenue New York IO, N. Y. Telephone: ORegon 5-5990 Price 5Ot “DEMOCRACY IS THE OPPORTUNITY TO GO ON WORKING” BY PATRICK MURPHY MALIN . 3 I. FREEDOM OF BELIEF, SPEECH AND ASSOCIATION 7 Censorship and Pressure Directed Against the Printed Word, the Stage and Screen, and Radio-TV ... '7 Freedom of Speech and Meeting ........ 18 Loyalty and Security: the Changing Tide ..... 21 Right to a License ............ 36 Academic Freedom ............ 39 Religion and Conscience .......... 44 II. JUSTICE UNDER LAW ............ 50 The Police ............... 50 Wiretapping ............... 54 Procedure in the Courts ........... 57 Procedure in the Federal Executive Departments . 70 Procedure in Legislative Hearings ....... 80 III. EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW ......... 87 Race, National Origin, Color, Creed ....... 87 Alaska and Hawaii Statehood ......... 98 Labor ................. 99 Women ................ 105 IV. INTERNATIONAL CIVIL LIBERTIES ....... 108 V. BALANCE SHEET OF COURT CASES ....... 113 VI. STRUCTURE AND PERSONNEL ........ 128 VII. MEMBERSHIP AND FINANCES. ........ 136 PUBLICATIONS LIST .............. 143 2 DEMOCRACY IS THE OPPORTUNI’I’Y TO GO ON WORKING PATRICK MURPHY MALIN Executive Director In the November, 1955, issue of Fortune, Chief Justice Earl Warren has a memorable article on “The Law and the Future.” It is not, how- ever, limited to the law, or to the future. The Chief Justice deals with the whole business of living in a free society under a democratic gov- ernment, and heeding his advice would produce a much better present as well as a much better future. He says, among other things: “Solon, asked how justice could be secured in Athens, replied, ‘If those who are not injured feel as indig- nant as those who are.’ This is especially good advice at a time when our Bill of Rights is under subtle and pervasive attack, as at present. The attack comes not only from without, but from our own indifference and failure of imagination. Minorities whose rights are threatened are quicker to band together in their own defense than in the defense of other minorities. The same is true, with less reason, of segments of the majority. “The pursuit of justice is not the vain pursuit of a remote abstrac- tion; it is a continuing direction of our daily conduct. Thus it is that when the generation of 1980 receives from us the Bill of Rights, the document will not have exactly the same meaning it had when we received it from our fathers. We will pass on a better Bill of Rights or a worse one, tarnished by neglect or burnished by growing use. If these rights are real, they need constant and imaginative application to new situations. “In the present struggle between our world and Communism, the temptation to imitate totalitarian security methods is a subtle tempta- tion that must be resisted day by day, for it will be with us as long as totalitarianism itself. But the Constitution exists for the indi- vidual as well as for the nation. I believe it will prove itself adaptable to this new challenge.” One fundamental and permanent trouble in meeting that constitu- tional challenge is that the American people, like all other people, have a great many other intense desires besides the three civil liberties- freedom of inquiry and communication, fair procedures, and non-dk criminarory treatment on the basis of individual merit, blind to race, 3 color or religion. All of us, to some extent or other, want bread and circuses; every dictatorship has been able to count on that for cruel exploitation, and every democracy must reckon with it for minimum survival. Even above the level of bread and circuses, we Americans specialize in wanting too much too quickly. So we are always tempted to endanger ourselves by neglecting, or actively blocking, those three main channels of political liberty. But that imperils not only the enjoyment of the civil liberties themselves, but also everything else. If we have freedom of inquiry and communi- cation, fair procedures and equality before the law, we have the best chance to achieve or defend or retrieve other values. On the other hand, even if we possess everything else our hearts’ desire, but are losing those primary and central liberties, then we stand in peril of losing all else too-sooner or later. Therefore, all of us would better keep clearing those main channels. How do we Americans stand in that essential work, as we end this year and look ahead? Well, our high courts and principal executive agencies are continuing to do a good job in clearing the main channel of equality before the law. The Interstate Commerce Commission has ordered that racial segregation on interstate trains and buses, and in station waiting rooms serving their passengers, must end by next January 10. But a terrifying lot of unfinished business will face us for a long time to come. Emmett Till is kidnapped and killed in Mississippi, neo-Klan organizations exert various kinds of coercion on Negroes in many parts of the South; and, in the North-whose often holier-than- thou bluff is being called by the rapid increase of its Negro population- discrimination in public housing takes on alarming proportions. Nor do we have all the time in the world to attend to this unfinished business; Africa and Arabia and Asia are looking ever more closely at us, and they hate much of what they see. The federal courts are steadily increasing their effectiveness in clear- ing the second main channel of fair procedures. District Court Judge Youngdahl, in the most recent of a series of fine decisions on passports, made on November 22 this widely and profoundly significant state- ment: “When the basis of action by any branch of the Government remains hidden from scrutiny and beyond practical review the seeds of arbitrary and irresponsible government are sown. More and more the courts have become aware of the irreparable damage . wrought by the secret informer and the faceless tale-bearer.” But here too we can never hope soon and finally to be out of the woods. Not only does the increase of governmental activity-federal, state and municipal- create a host of problems in the use of necessary administrative dis- cretion in applying rules and regulations to civil service employees and to ordinary citizens. But bigger and bigger cities breed more and more 4 organized crime, and hard-pressed police forces increasingly want to employ wiretapping and other “short-cuts.” We defenders of civil liberties may say, as we should: “No wiretapping; we’ll take the risk of such crime as cannot be combatted by other methods.” But it will rake a long time to convert people in general to that position, unless we also actively support the development and use of what we regard as constitutional and wise methods of law enforcement. Clearing the third main channel-most important of all--of free inquiry and communication is always the hardest job of all. We can rejoice over relatively uninterrupted progress in getting rid ot official prior censorship of motion pictures, and ever-growing resistance to private pressure-group attempts to enforce conformity by boycott throughout the mass communication field. But it will be many a long year before we can be comfortable about freedom in the public schools and colleges and universities--freedom from the threat of government domination-national or state-as a condition of government aid, and freedom from harassment by each sub-group in a local community which fails to understand the fundamental need for variety and demands instead the impossible and disastrous-that the schools should teach everything which that sub-group wants, and nothing which it does not want. And (as shown in the Allen Raymond report which the Union released on November 4) it will be just as long before we can be com- fortable about newspaper access to government news-from the national Department of Defense through the state road fund commissions to the county courthouse officials. We can thank our lucky stars for enterprising and responsible re- porters and editors and publishers, and for dedicated high court judges; but, in Lincoln’s words, it is necessary that we continue “dedicated to the great task remaining before us.” The text of this Report describes the work of the American Civil Liberties Union from July, 1954, to June, 1955, in support of that dedication. The highlights include: a reasoned study of comic book censorship, defense of the First Amendment rights of persons who have properly resisted improper legislative inquiry, constructive criticism of the government security program (through the testimony df our Board chairman, Ernest Angell), success in forcing the withdrawal of “How to Spot a Communist” (a vague and loosely drawn Army-Air Force pamphlet infringing on free speech), further testing of the Gwinn Amendment housing loyalty oath, attack upon state sedition laws (for ex,unple, the Braden and Nelson cases), attack upon the Reece Com- mittee’s blast against the foundations, successful action in calling for revision of the ROTC loyalty oath, effective intervention in state-church problems in California, Illinois and Pennsylvania, and some degree of success against Post O&e censorship. 5 Also: constant vigilance, across the nation, with respect to police brutality and illegal action, re-atbrmation of our stand against wire- tapping, frequent intervention in cases involving due process in the courts and before administrative agencies, and particularly effective intervention in passport and army discharge cases.