The ACLU's Long Battle for Racial Justice

by ACLU-PA Executive Director Reggie Shuford

Last Sunday, I attended a 50^th anniversary celebration of the landmark Supreme Court case, Abington v. Schempp, which established that students cannot be required to read the Bible in public schools. Schempp was brought by the Philadelphia Chapter of the ACLU, what would eventually become the ACLU of Pennsylvania.

The ACLU is well known for its work to protect First Amendment rights like the religious liberty principles at issue in Schempp. It’s likewise known for protecting the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. Last week, for example, the ACLU-PA was in court arguing on behalf of middle school students’ right to wear a bracelet supporting breast cancer awareness, which reads:  “I [Heart] Boobies. Keep A Breast.”

Back in the mid-1990s, when I announced that I had accepted a job with the national ACLU and was moving from North Carolina to New York City, a few good friends jokingly said: “Don't get up there and start defending the Ku Klux Klan!” Their reaction is not unique. People are quite familiar with the ACLU’s history of taking controversial First Amendment cases.

Perhaps less well known is that, since its founding in 1920, the ACLU has been engaged in the fight for civil rights and racial equality. In 1931, it took up the case of the Scottsboro Boys – nine African-American teenagers wrongly accused of raping two white women.  That same year, the ACLU published “Black Justice,” a comprehensive survey outlining institutionalized racism in America. In 1942, Roger Baldwin, a founder of the ACLU, established the national Committee Against Racial Discrimination.

Over the course of the next few decades, the ACLU became involved in some of the most important racial justices cases ever to reach the Supreme Court, including cases that: invalidated white-only primaries (1944); outlawed racially restrictive covenants requiring white homeowners to sell their homes to other whites (1947); established the “one person, one vote” rule (1964); found it unconstitutional to exclude women and African-Americans from juries (1966, 1967); and declared illegal racial segregation in state prisons and jails (1968). The ACLU also was involved in Brown v. Board Education, the 1954 case that famously struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine, and Loving v. Virginia, which ended bans on interracial marriage in 1967.

In 1964, the ACLU established a Southern Regional Office, which launched a number of lawsuits challenging racial discrimination and institutionalized segregation in the South. The Southern Regional Office eventually became the ACLU Voting Rights Project, which played an integral role in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Since then, the ACLU has been involved in every effort to reauthorize and protect the gains resulting from the Voting Rights Act. Just yesterday, the ACLU and allies from the Legal Defense Fund were back before the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder, in an effort to preserve Section 5 of the VRA. Roger Baldwin was right when he said, “No fight for civil liberties ever stays won.” 

In recent years, the ACLU has led the fight against racial profiling, to preserve affirmative action, and to end the school-to-prison pipeline. In Pennsylvania, we recently sued the Pittsburgh Police Department for its racially discriminatory hiring practices.  A few years ago, we sued the Philadelphia Police Department for targeting African-Americans and Latinos with its stop-and-frisk practices and continue to monitor those activities.

A current priority of the ACLU is criminal justice reform. The criminal justice system disproportionately targets and imprisons African-Americans. One in every nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 is incarcerated, and one in three black men will spend some part of his life in prison. Today, there are more African-Americans under correctional control (3.5 million) than were enslaved (3.2 million) in 1850. Mass incarceration, also known as the New Jim Crow, is largely the result of the War on Drugs and the growth of the prison industrial complex. It’s had a devastating impact on the lives of those convicted of crime, their families and communities. 

Last fall, in Adkins et al. v. Morgan Stanley, the ACLU, on behalf of black homeowners, sued Morgan Stanley for its predatory lending practices. While many families lost their homes in the recent foreclosure crisis, black and Latino families were especially hard hit. The case, the first of its kind, has been called perhaps the most important civil rights case in a generation.

Every year, during Black History Month, I am especially proud of the recognition of African-Americans, both famous and nameless, who dedicated or gave their lives to ensure that America live up to its founding ideals. I am also proud to be a part of an organization that continues to be engaged in the ongoing struggle for racial equality.

In America, black history is American history, and the ACLU is an important part of that history.

This post is part of a series honoring Black History Month.

The Founders’ Intent

by Ngani Ndimbie, ACLU-PA community organizer 

I’m just going to come out and say it: As a young activist in my late teens, it was very hard for me to get behind any friend or representative of the American Civil Liberties Union who used  “founders’ intent” jargon when discussing the rights of all. Or talking about the morality and wisdom of the men who wrote the Bill of Rights.

My thought as a black American always was, “Um. It was also the founders’ intent to keep black Americans enslaved forever. Or at least that’s what they wrote into the Constitution and failed to correct in the first 12 Amendments. So let’s not pretend that these men were infallible geniuses...”

My relationship with the Constitution and the early history of this country is fraught with mixed emotions. I wish I could imagine time-traveling back to 1790 to chat with Ben Franklin about the Patriot Act, PA’s Wiretap Act, and pre-conviction DNA testing, knowing that he would be pissed as hell and commiserate. I wish I could imagine having a long and rewarding discussion.

But as a black person I know that I’d barely be given enough time to get out of the Back-to-the Future-Delorean before being whisked away into slavery with the other black Americans.

Today I work for the ACLU of Pennsylvania as a community organizer defending the Constitution every day. And I love it. I have come to terms with the fact that the founders did not have the whole picture--but they understood an important part of it. The founders also included freedom and justice in the Constitution. And that cannot be overlooked.

When talking to people who dislike the ACLU, our legal director, Vic Walczak, often references the “liberty and justice for all” part of the Pledge of Allegiance, saying that the ACLU exists to secure that promise. Vic then questions the ACLU detractor, asking, “Do you have a problem with liberty?” “No,” they say. “Justice?” is Vic’s follow up. “No. I don’t have a problem with justice...”

It’s the “for all” part. A portion of our country’s leaders and citizens have always had trouble with the “for all” part. It’s our fellow Pennsylvanians who have commented on the articles announcing our Davila lawsuit  with terrible, ugly, and misguided thoughts. They aren’t bad people. In fact, I’d like to think that they are much like the founders.I trust that they really do believe in liberty and justice, but they’re still wrestling over that “for all” business (and are now thankfully required to by the 14th Amendment).

So while they work that out for themselves, the ACLU of Pennsylvania will continue to remind them of what America’s values really are.

We’ll nudge them with a lawsuit here, a petition there. We’ll block bills written by lawmakers who have chosen to ignore the Constitution. We’ll educate communities about their rights and mobilize people to take action.  

So in the end, the founders’ shortcomings have given me purpose. I consider myself lucky be part of such a wonderful team of staff, board members, community members, volunteers, and supporters gladly, tirelessly working for all.

This post is part of a series honoring Black History Month.

The Unique Voice of Octavia Butler (Reflections on Black History)

My first encounter with Octavia Butler was in a college science fiction course. Along with Dune, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Return of the King, and The Handmaid’s Tale, our syllabus included Wild Seed. I can’t say I was excited to read a strange book by an author I’d never heard of, but that changed once I began. Wild Seed is the first work of fantasy I encountered that diverged from the traditions of Tolkein and English fairytale, drawing inspiration instead from native African mythology.

For many fans of science fiction and fantasy, Butler (who died in 2006) represents a revelation, a first venture into something truly new and different. Speculative fiction as a genre is overwhelmingly white and European, chock full of noble savages and magical negros. Butler, who fought through dyslexia and rejection to journey from science fiction fan to award-winning author, brought the voice of the African American and the traditions of her African heritage.

Like all truly great speculative fiction, Butler’s work uses imaginary worlds to make us think and reflect on our own. Through her work, she confronts great moral questions including slavery, gender, religion, addiction, class inequality, tyranny, race, and the relationship of humans to their environment and to other species.  Depending on the work, these confrontations may be metaphorical or very direct. A central theme of Wild Seed, for instance, is the way two god-like immortals go about relating to mortal humans – one nurturing, the other tyrannical – and the consequences of their actions. Butler rarely seeks easy answers or absolutes – like many who really understand human nature, she is more interested to explore gray areas. Kindred, probably her best-known work, employs time travel as a device to confront U.S. slavery head-on, as an African American woman is transported from the 1970s to meet her ancestors in early nineteenth century Maryland.

Octavia Butler is often forgotten, which is tragic. Perhaps she is a victim of her genre, which—wild wildly popular, if TV and movies are any indication—is ignored by many critics and historians. Even more tragic, however, is that when she is mentioned, it is rarely acknowledged that she was a lesbian. Even some of her biggest fans are surprised to learn To be fair, she was never outspoken about her orientation, though she never hid it, either. Themes of gender ambiguity are rampant in her work.

Octavia Butler once described herself as “a pessimist if I’m not careful, a feminist always, a Black, a quiet egoist, a former Baptist, and an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.” Though I profile her here as a great figure in Black history, I prefer The Washington Post’s description: “One of the finest voices in fiction, period.”