{"id":185694,"date":"2025-04-15T07:29:07","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T07:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/americanstudies-april-15-2025-kyle-contexts-the-aclu\/"},"modified":"2025-04-15T07:29:07","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T07:29:07","slug":"americanstudies-april-15-2025-kyle-contexts-the-aclu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=185694","title":{"rendered":"AmericanStudies: April 15, 2025: Kyle Contexts: The ACLU"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

[This
\nweek, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week\u2019s
\nblog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to a repeat of
\nhis excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]<\/p>\n

Three
\nsignificant stages in the evolution of the nation\u2019s preeminent civil rights
\norganization (and one with which my blossoming future lawyer and\/or activist of
\na younger son has connected in multiple ways over the last few years):<\/span><\/p>\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>1910s and 20s Origins: The ACLU evolved out of
\nanother organization, the National
\nCivil Liberties Bureau<\/a> (NCLB), which was founded
\nduring World War I<\/a> (or the Great War, as it was then known) to defend
\nanti-war speech and conscientious objectors among other causes. The official
\nco-founders were Crystal
\nEastman<\/a> and Roger
\nNash Baldwin<\/a>, but original
\nmembers<\/a> also included such luminaries as Jane Addams, Helen Keller, Felix
\nFrankfurter, and the dissenting anti-war Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin. Its
\nWWI activisms certainly put the NLCB (which Baldwin renamed the ACLU in 1920
\nwhen he became its sole director) on the map, but it was its central role in the
\nScopes Trial<\/a> (about which I blogged a few weeks ago) which truly launched
\nthe organization into national prominence. <\/span><\/p>\n

2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Japanese incarceration: I wrote at length in my
\nbook We the People<\/i><\/a> about the role that Baldwin and the ACLU played
\nin the early
\nopposition to the Japanese incarceration<\/a> policy, leading up to their key
\nrole in all of the major court cases opposing that policy, from the unsuccessful
\nbut influential Korematsu
\nv. United States<\/a><\/i> to the successful and even more influential Ex parte
\nEndo<\/a><\/i>. While in hindsight it might be easy to see those efforts as right
\n(although these
\ndays<\/a> I\u2019m not at all sure that\u2019d be a shared perspective), it\u2019s important to
\nnote that Japanese incarceration was quite popular in its era, supported by a
\nsignificant majority of Americans, and indeed seen by many as part of the war
\neffort, making opposition to it potentially treasonous as well as unpopular.
\nBut the ACLU pursued that opposition nonetheless, to my mind one of the most
\ncourageous organizational actions of the 20th<\/sup> century. <\/span><\/p>\n

3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Loving v. Virginia<\/span><\/i>: A couple
\ndecades later, the ACLU took another unpopular and courageous stand, if perhaps
\none that also reflected a changing society that was coming around to the
\norganization\u2019s civil liberties and rights emphases. When young Black woman Mildred Jeter Loving
\nwrote to Attorney General Robert Kennedy<\/a> for help staying together with her
\nwhite husband Richard Loving despite Virginia\u2019s laws prohibiting their
\nmarriage, Kennedy referred the couple to
\nthe ACLU<\/a>, who represented them in their landmark
\nSupreme Court case<\/a>. Given that I grew up in Virginia and that my sons are
\nthe product of an interracial marriage, it\u2019s fair to say that this item
\nrepresents a truly multilayered context for Kyle!<\/span><\/p>\n

Next
\ncontext tomorrow,<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben<\/span><\/p>\n

PS. Lemme
\nknow any bday wishes I can pass along to my not-so-young man!<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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So I wanted to dedicate the week\u2019s blog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to a repeat of his excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.] Three significant stages in the evolution of the nation\u2019s preeminent civil rights organization (and one with which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[20188,13299,4759,72494,5254],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-185694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-aclu","tag-americanstudies","tag-april","tag-contexts","tag-kyle"],"yoast_head":"\nAmericanStudies: April 15, 2025: Kyle Contexts: The ACLU - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=185694\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"AmericanStudies: April 15, 2025: Kyle Contexts: The ACLU - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[This week, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! 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