The History & Background of the ACLU

In the years following World War I, America was gripped by the fear that the Communist Revolution in Russia would spread to the USA. As is often the case when fear outweighs rational debate, civil liberties paid the price. In Nov. 1919 and Jan. 1920, then Attorney General Mitchell Palmer began rounding up and deporting so-called radicals in the so called “Palmer Raids,”. Thousands were arrested without warrants and without regard to constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure. Those arrested were brutally treated and held in horrible conditions.

In the face of these egregious civil liberties abuses, a small group of people decided to take a stand, and thus was born the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU has evolved from this small group of idealists into the nation’s premier defender of the rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. It continues to fight government abuse and to defend individual freedoms including speech and religion, a woman’s right to choose, the right to due process, citizens’ rights to privacy, and much more. [Excerpted from aclu.org, June 2026]

The ACLU stands up for these rights even when the cause is unpopular, and sometimes when nobody else will.