Roger (Nash) Baldwin - Biography

Social activist, born in Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA. He taught sociology and was chief probation officer in St Louis, MO before serving prison time as a conscientious objector during World War 1. He was the director (1920–50) and national chairman (1950–5) of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that he had helped to found. During this time, the ACLU defended many controversial clients. On retiring, he taught for some years at the University of Puerto Rico.

Roger Nash Baldwin (January 21, 1884 – August 26, 1981) was a noted civil libertarian, pacifist, and social activist who held Communist views in his youth, yet continued to promote a Socialist agenda. He was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and its executive director until 1950;

Biography

Roger Nash Baldwin was born in Wellesley, Massachusetts to Frank Fenno Baldwin and Lucy Cushing Nash. this book became very influential in its era, and was, in part, the foundation of Baldwin's national reputation.

In St. Louis, Baldwin became greatly influenced by the radical social movement of the anarchist Emma Goldman. In the 1940s, Baldwin led the campaign to purge the ACLU of Communist Party members .

Baldwin was a lifelong pacifist; After the passage of the Selective Service Act, Baldwin called for the AUAM to create a legal division to protect the rights of conscientous objectors. On July 1st, 1917, the AUAM responded by creating the Civil Liberties Bureau (CLB), headed by Baldwin. The CLB separated from the AUAM on October 1st, 1917, renaming itself the National Civil Liberties Bureau, with Baldwin as director. In 1920, NCLB was renamed the American Civil Liberties Union with Baldwin continuing as the ACLU's first executive director.

As director, Baldwin was integral to the shape of the association's early character; it was under Baldwin's leadership that the ACLU undertook some of its most famous cases, including the Scopes Monkey Trial, the Sacco and Vanzetti murder trial, and its challenge to the ban on James Joyce's Ulysses. Baldwin retired from the ACLU leadership in 1950, but remained active in politics for the rest of his life. In Japan, he founded the Japan Civil Liberties Union, and the Japanese government awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun.

President Jimmy Carter awarded Baldwin the Medal of Freedom on 16 January 1981. Baldwin Refused To Submit To Examination Under Draft Law. Nearing With Him In Court Shakes Baldwin's Hand After Sentence. Baldwin, former Director of the National Civil Liberties Bureau and an official of the American Union Against Militarism, was sentenced yesterday to serve one year in the Federal penitentiary at Atlanta for violating the selective draft law through refusal to submit to physical examination.