American Civil Liberties Union in the 1930s and 1940s in the United States
American Civil Liberties Union in the 1930s and 1940s
The ACLU went on to join a wide variety of rights-related causes that challenged traditional political and social mores. In 1932 the ACLU organized the National Committee on Freedom from Censorship ‘to fight censorship in the literary arts, the press, motion and talking pictures, the radio, and the scientific discussion of sex.’ The following year the ACLU won a landmark ruling on book censorship. The novel Ulysses (1922), by Irish author James Joyce, had been banned in the United States since excerpts of the manuscript were published from 1918 to 1920 in the American magazine The Little Review. It was considered “obscene” for containing sexual content. But in 1933 a federal court ruling prohibited the U.S. Customs Service from confiscating the book at all U.S. borders. The decision changed the legal definition of “obscenity.” Previously, a book was ruled obscene if it contained one or more passages of offensive language that could possibly have an adverse effect on members of society “whose minds are open to such immoral influences.” For the first time in court, the artistic value of an entire book outweighed its passages of controversial language and content.
During World War II (1939-1945) the ACLU won a ruling on religious freedom before the Supreme Court of the United States. In the late 1930s public schools required all students to salute the United States flag as a show of patriotism. However, members of the religious group Jehovah’s Witnesses did not want their children to salute the flag because it went against their beliefs to show allegiance to any government. The ACLU argued that the public school policy infringed on freedom of religion. In the case West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), the Supreme Court ruled Jehovah’s Witnesses could refuse to salute the flag without being penalized by school officials.
The ACLU was also the only national organization to challenge Japanese American internment camps during World War II. Fearing that some Japanese Americans worked as government spies, the federal government moved about 110,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps. In Korematsu v. United States (1944) the ACLU fought to overturn the five-year prison sentence of a Japanese American man who had refused to live in an internment camp. The ACLU argued that fundamental individual rights should not be sacrificed during wartime. Although the ACLU lost the Supreme Court case in 1944, the organization continued to fight for legislation that would grant reparations to internees. More than 40 years later, the Congress of the United States in 1988 approved legislation calling the internment a “grave injustice,” and the federal government paid $20,000 to each surviving internee. (1)
In this Section: American Civil Liberties Union, American Civil Liberties Union Early Years, American Civil Liberties Union in the 1930S and 1940S, American Civil Liberties Union in the 1950s and 1960s, American Civil Liberties Union in the 1970s and 1980s and American Civil Liberties Union Developments.
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