Conditions Governing Access
Accruals
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Arrangement
Biographical / Historical
Preferred Citation
Processing Information
Scope and Contents
Separated Materials
Bibliography
Language of Material:
English
Contributing Institution:
California Historical Society
Title: American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California records
Creator:
American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
Identifier/Call Number: MS 3580
Physical Description:
168 Linear Feet
Date (inclusive): 1900-2000
Date (bulk): bulk 1934-2000
Abstract: The American Civil Liberties Union of
Northern California (ACLU-NC) records cover the years 1900 to 2000, with the bulk dating
from 1934. Comprising correspondence, minutes, policy statements, annual reports, legal
documents, attorneys' working notes, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, and other
printed material created or collected by the ACLU-NC, these records document the
establishment and activities of the northern California branch, including and especially its
efforts to protect and extend individual liberties in California. Administrative records
(series 1), subject files (series 2), legal case files (series 3), and scrapbooks (series 4)
illuminate some of the major social and political conflicts of the twentieth century in
California and nationwide, including: the 1934 waterfront and general strike; the relocation
and internment of Japanese Americans during World War II; the mandatory loyalty oaths and
HUAC hearings of the late 1940s and 1950s; the social movements of the 1960s, including the
Free Speech, anti-war, and civil rights movements; battles over abortion, immigration, and
gay rights in the 1970s and '80s; and privacy and censorship controversies raised by the
popularization of the Internet in the 1990s. Administrative records (series 1) also document
the activities of the ACLU's national office in New York.
Language of Material: Collection materials are in English.
Physical Location: Collection is stored on-site.
Conditions Governing Access
Consistent with the ACLU-NC's support for freedom of information and informed public
discourse on matters of public interest, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern
California records are open to researchers. However, some categories of records in the
collection are restricted to protect privacy, confidentiality, and attorney-client
privilege. These restrictions are identified in the Access Policy for the American Civil
Liberties Union of Northern California Archives at the California Historical Society and
summarized below.
All researchers must sign the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California
Archives Records Access Agreement, confirming that they have read and understood the
restrictions outlined in the Access Policy for the American Civil Liberties Union of
Northern California Archives at the California Historical Society. These documents are
available at the reference desk and can be sent by e-mail.
Restricted Materials in the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern
California records, MS 3580
:
Personnel records: Records that deal with personnel issues
are closed during the lifetime of the person to whom they apply. This restriction will be
lifted if the person to whom the records apply gives his or her permission in writing to
disclose said information.
Administrative records: Records maintained by ACLU-NC
administrators are closed for 20 years after the creation of the record or 10 years after
its deposit at the California Historical Society, whichever is later, but in no case for
more than 30 years after the creation of the record.
Development records: Records relating to financial support
from foundations or other legal entities but not to individuals or their family foundations
are closed for the same period as administrative records. If they contain information about
substantive policy issues, records relating to individual donors or their family foundations
are closed for the same period as administrative records. Where opened, the portions
relating to individuals or their family foundations are closed during the lifetime of the
person to whom they apply. This restriction will be lifted if the person to whom the records
apply gives his or her permission in writing to disclose said information.
Legal case records:
Work-product privileged records, including correspondence, memoranda, drafts or briefs
prepared in anticipation of litigation, written statements of witnesses, and notes of mental
impressions or personal recollections prepared or formed by an attorney, are closed for 20
years after the case to which they apply is closed.
Attorney-client privileged records, including any documents reflecting an exchange of
communication with a client or a potential client made for the purpose of furnishing or
obtaining professional legal advice and assistance, are closed for 75 years after the
creation of the record for all clients except children, where the period of closure is 100
years after the creation of the record.
Other confidential records, including classified documents, documents that a court has
placed under seal or subject to a protective order, and documents that identify clients who
have been represented anonymously or pseudonymously, are permanently closed unless the
records are declassified or unsealed, the protective order is modified, or the client or the
client's legal representative has waived the privilege in writing.
Accruals
Additions to the collection are ongoing.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The collection was donated to the California Historical Society by the American Civil
Liberties Union of Northern California in 1977. Additional deposits were made in 2006 and
2011.
Arrangement
The ACLU-NC records are arranged in four series: (1) administrative records; (2) subject
files; (3) case files; and (4) scrapbooks. Series divisions, additional subdivisions, and
subject headings are derived from the ACLU-NC's recordkeeping practices and authority file,
and have been retained in order to preserve the collection's integrity.
Additions to the case files (1974-1993) maintained the original order of the files that
were transferred from the ACLU in 2011. The language used in the original folder headings
was maintained, even when this language is internally inconsistent. The files are in
imperfect alphabetical order, also per original order. Materials that are either permanently
restricted or restricted because they contain attorney-client privileged information are
physically arranged at the end of the subseries.
Biographical / Historical
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a non-profit organization committed to the
defense, preservation, and extension of civil liberties in the United States. Through legal
and legislative advocacy – and public suasion – the ACLU has opposed the restriction of
individual liberties by laws and governments, defending a wide range of controversial
causes.
The ACLU traces it roots to the American Union Against Militarism (AUAM), a pacifist
organization founded in 1916 to defend the rights of pacifists, socialists, and labor
activists to protest U.S. military conscription and intervention in World War I. In response
to the federal Espionage Act of 1917 – which curtailed and placed severe penalties on those
activities deemed hazardous to the war effort – the AUAM established a National Civil
Liberties Bureau headed by Roger Baldwin. The 1918 Sedition Act, followed by the arrest and
deportation of suspected radicals in the Palmer Raids, convinced the Bureau that a permanent
civil liberties organization was necessary. In 1920 the AUAM was discontinued and the
American Civil Liberties Union was founded in New York with Roger Baldwin as executive
director.
The 1920s were turbulent years for the new organization. Invoking the principle of
academic freedom, the ACLU challenged Tennessee's anti-evolution law in the famous Scopes
Trial of 1925. Although public opinion remained decidedly pro-creationism, the
well-publicized trial propelled the ACLU into national prominence. On other fronts, from
steel mills to textile factories, the ACLU championed labor's right to organize and strike.
Repeatedly, it bailed out and defended Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Bill Haywood, leaders of
the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), as well as scores of other workers. The Union was
also deeply involved in efforts to secure a retrial for Italian American anarchists Nicola
Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.
In California, civil liberties advocates were engaged in a struggle to repeal the 1919
Criminal Syndicalism Act. Acting under the auspices of the Labor Defense League, attorney
Austin Lewis enlisted the aid of the ACLU to challenge and stop the arrests of striking
workers, labor activists, and radicals. Although concerned individuals, such as Lewis, were
associated with the national office, their attempts to begin a branch in Northern California
were slow to materialize. Despite efforts by Lewis and local director Elmo Robinson, the San
Francisco chapter, begun in 1925, did not generate sufficient enthusiasm or financial
support, and it closed the following year.
The waterfront and general strike of 1934 ushered in a new era for the ACLU in northern
California. After two workers were killed on July 5 ("Bloody Thursday") in San Francisco,
the West Coast waterfront strike erupted into a city-wide general strike, called by Bay Area
unions in support of the striking longshoremen. As the strike escalated, so did the
vigilante reaction in the Northern California communities of Berkeley, Richmond, Palo Alto,
and Santa Rosa, where the homes and offices of trade unionists, radicals, and leftist
organizations were raided. The most egregious of these incidents occurred in Santa Rosa,
where three residents accused of organizing apple pickers were beaten, tarred, and
feathered.
Responding to a letter from the national office, six Bay Area ACLU supporters agreed to
work with Austin Lewis and represent the Union in San Francisco during the emergency. At the
same time, the national office requested that two members of the Southern California Branch,
Ernest Besig and Chester Williams, travel to San Francisco to act as organizers and
investigators in conjunction with this new group.
Originally, Besig and Williams had intended to help file lawsuits and combat vigilantism.
They soon began considering the feasibility of establishing a northern California branch.
Almost immediately they were embroiled in a struggle over the branch's political neutrality,
a problem with which the ACLU-NC would grapple throughout its development. For Besig and
Williams, the issue was how to maintain a strictly non-partisan position despite pressure
from the national office and the political Left to join forces. Committing themselves to the
principle of defending civil liberties regardless of politics, they made an effort to
organize. Chester Williams became the organizing director, seed money was received from the
national office, and sixty members were recruited to join to the newly established permanent
branch of the ACLU in northern California.
In early 1935, after more than seventeen years of involvement with the ACLU, Austin Lewis
resigned his position as counsel to the executive committee, and Dr. George Hedley became
the first executive director. During his short term in office a strong executive board was
established, while the Union continued the struggle to repeal the criminal syndicalism laws.
Partisan politics again interfered, and in April 1935 Dr. Hedley resigned. Ernest Besig
returned to northern California in June to investigate violations of civil liberties
resulting from the Eureka lumber strike and subsequent vigilantism. As a result of his
involvement in this and other new cases, Besig remained in San Francisco and by the end of
1935 had become the director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California
(ACLU-NC), a position he retained until his retirement in 1971.
Under Besig's leadership the ACLUL-NC intervened in a wide range of civil rights cases,
challenging restrictions of individual liberty in the spheres of education, work, politics,
and travel. Its legislative and legal efforts included protecting the children of Jehovah's
Witnesses from dismissal for refusing to salute the American flag at school; defending
workers' rights to organize, picket, and distribute literature; promoting academic freedom;
and challenging restrictive immigration policies like the "anti-Oakie law." During this
period the ACLU-NC also defended far-right organizations, petitioning for the Nazi Bund's
right of assembly.
From its beginnings, the ACLU-NC often parted ways with the national office. In 1941 the
executive and military orders to relocate and detain thousands of Japanese Americans
provoked a major rift between the local branch and the national office. At the onset of
World War II, the national office passed the Resolution of 1942, codifying its policy of
non-assistance to individuals cooperating with enemies of the United States during wartime.
This policy limited ACLU intervention on behalf of Japanese Americans to the protection of
the individual's right to due process. In other words, the ACLU would defend the right of
individual Japanese Americans to a hearing prior to relocation, but would not challenge the
constitutionality of the internment itself.
Despite pressure from New York, the ACLU-NC became actively involved in the relocation
issue, arguing that Executive Order 9066 was fundamentally unconstitutional. Under the
Resolution of 1942, the national office objected to the ACLU-NC's intervention on behalf of
Fred Korematsu and Japanese American citizens detained at Tule Lake. As a result of these
disputes, the ACLU-NC faced possible disaffiliation from the national organization. Finally,
a compromise was reached: local branches could maintain decision-making powers on local
issues, leaving the national board the option to disclaim their actions. Likewise, local
branches could disclaim a position held by the national office.
Other significant civil liberties fights undertaken in the 1940s included defending
conscientious objectors' right to refuse military service on the grounds of religious
freedom, and advocating for the rights of returning Nisei soldiers and other veterans of
color.
In the late 1940s and 1950s, national post-war anxieties over Soviet expansion created a
political climate hostile to the Left. Under the rubric of national security, an invigorated
House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) launched investigations into government and
private industry, academic institutions, and the military in order to uncover hidden
subversives. Mandatory loyalty oaths and classified government security hearings resulted
from this official outpouring of anti-Communist anxiety.
The ACLU-NC actively challenged the various conformity oaths, as well as the authority of
federal, state, and local investigating committees to inquire into the associations and
affiliations of private citizens. The organization also fought to reinstate workers who had
been fired because of their alleged political affiliations and beliefs. In less publicized
cases, the ACLU-NC defended gays and lesbians against invasion of privacy, entrapment, and
intimidation; fought against the "gentlemen's agreements" directed against Jews; and
protested the distribution of religious literature in public schools. In a famous 1957
censorship case, the ACLU-NC defended San Francisco bookseller and poet Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, who had been charged with obscenity for selling Allen Ginsburg's poem
Howl.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the ACLU and its northern California affiliate became involved in
many of the civil rights and social movements that were sweeping the country. The ACLU-NC
defended the civil liberties of students, activists, and demonstrators involved in the
Berkeley Free Speech Movement, student anti-HUAC demonstrations, and anti-Vietnam war
sit-ins, and challenged Proposition 14, an initiative that repealed the Rumford Fair Housing
Act of 1963. The Union also defended the rights of women, gays, and lesbians to due process
and equality before the law in housing, employment, public accommodations, and child custody
cases, while advocating for the rights of the poor and incarcerated, including welfare
recipients, prisoners, and patients in mental hospitals. In 1972, the ACLU-NC successfully
championed a Privacy Amendment to the state constitution, which helped provide a legal
foundation for abortion rights in California.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the ACLU-NC continued to defend and advocate for the rights of
immigrants, women, gays and lesbians, and prisoners. The affiliate founded the Lesbian and
Gay Rights Project, which provided legal support for gays and lesbians in employment
discrimination and other cases, while laying the groundwork for state domestic partnership
laws. When the HIV/AIDS crisis erupted, the ACLU-NC fought to protect the privacy, rights,
and freedoms of HIV-positive people. At the same time, the Union worked to defend and expand
access to abortion in California. They actively defended the rights of prisoners of all
kinds, lobbied for affirmative action, and defended the reproductive rights of Medi-Cal
patients. They fought to protect the rights of immigrants invited to speak as experts, and
those protesting oppressive governments in their home countries. They argued on behalf of
gay choristers, female boxers, and challenged the exclusivity of the hundreds of years old,
male only institution the Bohemian Club. With the rise of the Internet in the 1990s, the
ACLU-NC began to address issues of censorship and privacy vis-à-vis computer
technologies.
The ACLU-NC is a living organization that continues to provide legal and legislative
advocacy for civil liberties in cases involving a wide range of issues, including
censorship, police practices, abortion, capital punishment, juvenile rights, criminal
justice, and the separation of church and state.
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item]; American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California records; MS
3580; [box number, folder number]; California Historical Society.
Processing Information
The first deposit of the ACLU-NC records was processed by California Historical Society
staff in 1980-1981, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The public
information subject files were processed by California Historical Society staff in
2007-2008. Three boxes of video tapes deposited at the California Historical Society in 2006
are unprocessed.
31 boxes of case files were deposited at the California Historical Society in 2011, and
were processed by Erin Hurley in 2019, with support from the National Historical
Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). The original order of the files as transferred
was maintained, and original folders (which were in fragile condition) were replaced with
acid-free folders. Original folder headings were also maintained.
Scope and Contents
The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU-NC) records cover the years
1900 to 2000, with the bulk dating from 1934, when the Northern California branch was
permanently established in San Francisco. Comprising correspondence, minutes, policy
statements, annual reports, legal documents, attorneys' working notes, scrapbooks, newspaper
clippings, pamphlets, and other printed material created or collected by the ACLU-NC, these
voluminous records document the establishment and activities of the northern California
branch, including and especially its wide-ranging efforts – on the legislative, legal, and
educational fronts – to protect and extend individual liberties in California.
Administrative records (series 1), subject files (series 2), legal case files (series 3),
and scrapbooks (series 4) illuminate some of the major social and political conflicts of the
twentieth century in California and nationwide, including: the 1934 waterfront and general
strike; the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans during World War II; the
mandatory loyalty oaths and HUAC hearings of the late 1940s and 1950s; the social movements
of the 1960s, including the Free Speech, anti-war, and civil rights movements; battles over
abortion, immigration, and gay rights in the 1970s and '80s; and privacy and censorship
controversies raised by the popularization of the Internet in the 1990s. Administrative
records (series 1) also document the activities of the ACLU's national office in New York
and its sometimes strained relationship with the northern California affiliate.
The 2011 additions to the case files are comprised of over 100 ACLU legal cases dated
1974-1993, and cover such topics as: police brutality and excessive use of force by police
officers as well as the complicit oversight of those in supervisory positions; affirmative
action in a variety of employment contexts; the mechanics of school desegregation; the right
to protest and the attempt to curtail this right by a variety of institutions; immigrant
rights; overly broad city ordinances which attempt to limit activities such as prostitution
and loitering by the homeless; the reproductive rights of Medi-Cal patients; prisoners
rights in a variety of contexts, including juvenile prisoners; workplace harassment; unfair
or discriminatory discharge from employment situations; and the rights of those attempting
to negotiate a fair employment contract through a union.
The materials included in the additions to the case files include: correspondence,
newspaper clippings, press releases, official court documents, and attorney notes.
Separated Materials
Photographs have been removed and shelved under MSP 3580. Two record storage cartons of
pamphlets were deemed out of scope of the 2011 case files additions and will be processed at
a later date.
Bibliography
The following resources were consulted during the 2011 revision:
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/; https://law.justia.com/; https://casetext.com/;
https://openjurist.org/.
Also consulted was: Barlett, Katherine T., Grossman, Joanna L., and Deborah L. Rhode.
Gender and Law: Theory, Doctrine, Commentary (New York: Wllters Klewer,
2017), accessed September 10, 2019,
https://books.google.com/books?id=HujfDgAAQBAJ&pg=PT53&lpg=PT53&dq=carolyn+bobb+california&source=bl&ots=kPlIqmlsyo&sig=ACfU3U2C1iVkDOKO8hX2G2nxMvDk9ihNaw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiO8MfQ5cbkAhWpHjQIHYGtAYEQ6AEwCXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=carolyn%20bobb%20california&f=false.
Quoted text in file-level case descriptions comes from the archival material itself.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, "Our history," retrieved
May 2011 from http://www.aclunc.org/about/history/index.shtml
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Abortion -- Finance -- Law and legislation -- United States
AIDS (Disease) -- Patients -- Civil rights -- California
Anti-communist movements -- California
Assembly, Right of -- United States
Capital punishment -- California
Case files
Censorship -- California
Civil rights -- California
Civil rights -- United States
Constitutional law -- California
Constitutional law -- United States
Due process of law--United States.
Free Speech Movement (Berkeley, Calif.)
Freedom of association -- United States
Freedom of movement -- United States
Freedom of religion -- United States
Freedom of speech -- United States
Gay bathhouses -- Government policy -- United States
Gay rights -- California
General Strike, San Francisco, Calif., 1934
Immigrants -- Civil rights -- California
Japanese Americans -- Evacuation and relocation, 1942-1945
Labor movement -- California
Landlord and tenant -- California
Loyalty oaths -- California
Mentally ill -- Civil rights -- California
Prisoners -- Civil rights -- California
Prisoners -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- California
Scrapbooks
Syndicalism -- California
Vietnam War, 1961-1975 -- Protest movements -- California
Women's rights -- California
American Civil Liberties Union.