The ACLU Is Founded in New York

On January 19, 1920, the National Committee of the newly renamed American Civil Liberties Union held its first official meeting in New York City. The group grew out of the National Civil Liberties Bureau, which Roger Baldwin and Crystal Eastman had started in 1917 to defend conscientious objectors who refused to fight in World War I. Baldwin had just gotten out of a federal penitentiary himself, sentenced for refusing to register for the draft. That first meeting was almost entirely logistics: money, an office, a clipping service to track the news. The bigger reasoning behind it came from the Palmer Raids and the wartime crackdowns that had just happened, which convinced Baldwin the country needed a permanent, nonpartisan defender of the Bill of Rights instead of a temporary wartime committee.