Independent American Political Groups: American Civil Liberties Union (1915 - 1946)

ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORYThe American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) began its existence in November 1915, when a group of social workers, reform advocates, and academics organized a group called the American Union Against Militarism (AUAM) in response to the slide of the United States towards the European war.

In April of 1917, the National Committee of the AUAM was joined by a young sociologist from Massachusetts named Roger Baldwin. Baldwin organized a civil liberties bureau of the organization to defend the rights of socialists, pacifists, and other wartime dissidents who were coming under legal fire from the increasingly reactionary and authoritarian administration of Woodrow Wilson, fronted by his Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer.
The National Civil LIberties Bureau became a separate organization from the AUAM on October 1, 1917.
On January 20, 1920, the National Civil Liberties Bureau changed its name to the American Civil Liberties Bureau, the change intended to signal an expanded mission beyond the support of conscientious and political objectors to American military intervention in Europe.

[fn. Edward R. Kantowicz, "American Civil Liberties Union" in Historical Dictionary of the Progressive Era, 1890-1920. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988), pp. 13-14.]