The U.S. Supreme Court had yet to uphold a single free speech claim when Roger Baldwin, Crystal Eastman, Albert DeSilver and others formed the ACLU in 1920. Activists languished in jail for distributing anti-war literature. State sanctioned violence against African Americans was routine. Women won the right to vote only in August of that year. Constitutional rights for lesbians and gays, bisexual and transgender people in those days were unthinkable. So the ACLU was founded to defend and secure these rights and to extend them to people who have been excluded from their protection—Native Americans and other people of color; lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people; women; mental patients; prisoners; people with disabilities; and the poor.

In our first year, we fought the harassment and deportation of immigrants whose activism put them at odds with the authorities. In 1939, we won in the U.S. Supreme Court the right for unions to organize.We stood almost alone in 1942 in denouncing our government’s round-up and internment in concentration camps of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans. And at times in our history when frightened civilians have been willing to trade off to the authorities a little of their freedom and rights for a measure of security, the ACLU has been the bulwark for liberty.