Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union

Columbia Studies in Contemporary American History

by Robert C. Cottrell

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.

Genres: Biography

608 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Robert C. Cottrell is professor of history and American studies at Cal State Chico and has written over twenty books, including Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll.

Reviews

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adequate, especially as it is the first truly comprehensive biography of Mr. Baldwin. While it ticks off all the boxes, it does not spark or sparkle, unlike its subject. Reading it made me regret that the great biographer Joseph Lash never finished or published the biography of Baldwin that he started researching in the early 1970’s from whose interviews, judging from the Notes, the author gleaned much of use (and interest).

The author obviously worked hard, and the book is certainly worth reading, but the glimpses of the subject as he was are like sunlight peeping mischievously through heavy clouds.

[Clayton Brannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written balanced biography on the life a truly great American.