The Accomplishments of the ACLU

Over the years, the ACLU has in large part, changed the way we live and the society we live in. Before the founding of the ACLU in 1920, not one free speech case had ever been won in front of the United States Supreme Court. The organization’s first great accomplishment occurred when it won the right for teachers to teach evolution in public school during the Scope Monkey Trial in 1925. They fought valiantly for the rights of interned Japanese Americans in World War II. Even though in 1940, the organization broke all ties with the Communist Party, the ACLU defended many accused people during the Communist witch hunt of the 1950s McCarthy era. The ACLU expanded the parameters of free speech in 1952 when the Court decided that a movie called The Miracle could not be censored for being sacrilegious. Although the organization lost much of its popularity, it stood by defending Nazis, Communists, and racists many times including the 1978 Skokie case involving the Nazis right to march in a predominantly Jewish town. The ACLU protected a women’s right to have an abortion in the 1973 case Roe v. Wade. Even today the organization fights against the encroachment on our civil liberties by the Patriot Act. Without the ACLU, our nation would have less protection for the freedoms that are granted in the Constitution.