Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union: (Columbia Studies in Contemporary American History)

Roger Nash Baldwin's thirty-year tenure as director of the ACLU marked the period when the modern understanding of the Bill of Rights came into being. Spearheaded by Baldwin, volunteer attorneys of the caliber of Clarence Darrow, Arthur Garfield Hays, Osmond Frankel, and Edward Ennis transformed the constitutional landscape. Company police forces were dismantled. Antievolutionists were discredited (thanks to the Scopes Trial). Censorship of such works as James Joyce's Ulysses was halted. The Scottsboro Boys and Sacco and Vanzetti were defended. The right of free speech for communists and Ku Klux Klansmen alike was upheld, and the foundations were laid for an end to school segregation. Robert Cottrell's magnificent book recaptures the accomplishments and contradictions of the complicated man at the center of these events. Driven, vain, frugal, and tempestuous, America's greatest civil libertarian was initially also a staunch defender of Communist Russia, deferred to the U.S. government over the internment of Japanese Americans, and openly admired J. Edgar Hoover and Douglas MacArthur. His personal relationships were equally complex. Spanning a hundred years from the late 1800s through Baldwin's death in 1981, this riveting biography is an eye-opening view of the development of the American left.

Table of Contents:
Preface Acknowledgments 1. Growing Up in Wellesley Hills 2. The Inevitable Harvard and Beyond 3. The Progressive as Social Worker 4. The Civic League 5. Early Civil Liberties Career 6. The National Civil Liberties Bureau 7. The United States v. Roger Baldwin 8. Prison Life 9. An Unconventional Marriage 10. The American Civil Liberties Union 11. The ACLU Under Suspicion 12. Turning to the Courts 13. International Human Rights 14. A European Sabbatical 15. Free Speech and the Class Struggle 16. From the United Front to the Popular Front 17. The Home Front 18. Controversies on the Path from Fellow Traveling to Anticommunism 19. Civil Liberties During World War II 20. "Quite a Dysfunctional Family" 21. The Cold War, the Shogun, and International Civil Liberties 22. A Very Public Retirement in the Age of Anticommunism 23. A Man of Contradictions 24. Matters of Principle 25. The Public Image 26. Traveling Hopefully Notes Collections, Oral Histories, and Interviews Bibliography Subject Index Name Index

About the Author :
Robert Cottrell is professor of history and American studies at California State University, Chico. He has written numerous books and articles on American liberalism, reform, and radicalism in the twentieth century, including Izzy: A Biography of I. F. Stone.

Review :
Cottrell fills the pages with Baldwin's mentors, allies and foe... providing a detailed and comprehensive understanding of 80 years of progressive activity. Publishers Weekly A rich, textured portrait highlighting Baldwin's numerous contradictions... Highly recommended at all levels. -- R. J. Goldstein Choice A tale worth telling. Cottrell tells it very well. -- Michael R. Belknap Journal of American HIstory