The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a non-profit organization committed to the defense, preservation, and extension of civil liberties in the United States. Through legal and legislative advocacy – and public suasion – the ACLU has opposed the restriction of individual liberties by laws and governments, defending a wide range of controversial causes.

The ACLU traces it roots to the American Union Against Militarism (AUAM), a pacifist organization founded in 1916 to defend the rights of pacifists, socialists, and labor activists to protest U.S. military conscription and intervention in World War I. In response to the federal Espionage Act of 1917 – which curtailed and placed severe penalties on those activities deemed hazardous to the war effort – the AUAM established a National Civil Liberties Bureau headed by Roger Baldwin. The 1918 Sedition Act, followed by the arrest and deportation of suspected radicals in the Palmer Raids, convinced the Bureau that a permanent civil liberties organization was necessary. In 1920 the AUAM was discontinued and the American Civil Liberties Union was founded in New York with Roger Baldwin as executive director.

The 1920s were turbulent years for the new organization. Invoking the principle of academic freedom, the ACLU challenged Tennessee's anti-evolution law in the famous Scopes Trial of 1925. Although public opinion remained decidedly pro-creationism, the well-publicized trial propelled the ACLU into national prominence. On other fronts, from steel mills to textile factories, the ACLU championed labor's right to organize and strike. Repeatedly, it bailed out and defended Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Bill Haywood, leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), as well as scores of other workers. The Union was also deeply involved in efforts to secure a retrial for Italian American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

In California, civil liberties advocates were engaged in a struggle to repeal the 1919 Criminal Syndicalism Act. Acting under the auspices of the Labor Defense League, attorney Austin Lewis enlisted the aid of the ACLU to challenge and stop the arrests of striking workers, labor activists, and radicals. Although concerned individuals, such as Lewis, were associated with the national office, their attempts to begin a branch in Northern California were slow to materialize. Despite efforts by Lewis and local director Elmo Robinson, the San Francisco chapter, begun in 1925, did not generate sufficient enthusiasm or financial support, and it closed the following year.

The waterfront and general strike of 1934 ushered in a new era for the ACLU in northern California. After two workers were killed on July 5 (“Bloody Thursday”) in San Francisco, the West Coast waterfront strike erupted into a city-wide general strike, called by Bay Area unions in support of the striking longshoremen. As the strike escalated, so did the vigilante reaction in the Northern California communities of Berkeley, Richmond, Palo Alto, and Santa Rosa, where the homes and offices of trade unionists, radicals, and leftist organizations were raided. The most egregious of these incidents occurred in Santa Rosa, where three residents accused of organizing apple pickers were beaten, tarred, and feathered.

Responding to a letter from the national office, six Bay Area ACLU supporters agreed to work with Austin Lewis and represent the Union in San Francisco during the emergency. At the same time, the national office requested that two members of the Southern California Branch, Ernest Besig and Chester Williams, travel to San Francisco to act as organizers and investigators in conjunction with this new group.

Originally, Besig and Williams had intended to help file lawsuits and combat vigilantism. They soon began considering the feasibility of establishing a northern California branch. Almost immediately they were embroiled in a struggle over the branch’s political neutrality, a problem with which the ACLU-NC would grapple throughout its development. For Besig and Williams, the issue was how to maintain a strictly non-partisan position despite pressure from the national office and the political Left to join forces. Committing themselves to the principle of defending civil liberties regardless of politics, they made an effort to organize. Chester Williams became the organizing director, seed money was received from the national office, and sixty members were recruited to join to the newly established permanent branch of the ACLU in northern California.

In early 1935, after more than seventeen years of involvement with the ACLU, Austin Lewis resigned his position as counsel to the executive committee, and Dr. George Hedley became the first executive director. During his short term in office a strong executive board was established, while the Union continued the struggle to repeal the criminal syndicalism laws. Partisan politics again interfered, and in April 1935 Dr. Hedley resigned. Ernest Besig returned to northern California in June to investigate violations of civil liberties resulting from the Eureka lumber strike and subsequent vigilantism. As a result of his involvement in this and other new cases, Besig remained in San Francisco and by the end of 1935 had become the director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU-NC), a position he retained until his retirement in 1971.

Under Besig's leadership the ACLUL-NC intervened in a wide range of civil rights cases, challenging restrictions of individual liberty in the spheres of education, work, politics, and travel. Its legislative and legal efforts included protecting the children of Jehovah’s Witnesses from dismissal for refusing to salute the American flag at school; defending workers’ rights to organize, picket, and distribute literature; promoting academic freedom; and challenging restrictive immigration policies like the “anti-Oakie law.” During this period the ACLU-NC also defended far-right organizations, petitioning for the Nazi Bund’s right of assembly.

From its beginnings, the ACLU-NC often parted ways with the national office. In 1941 the executive and military orders to relocate and detain thousands of Japanese Americans provoked a major rift between the local branch and the national office. At the onset of World War II, the national office passed the Resolution of 1942, codifying its policy of non-assistance to individuals cooperating with enemies of the United States during wartime. This policy limited ACLU intervention on behalf of Japanese Americans to the protection of the individual’s right to due process. In other words, the ACLU would defend the right of individual Japanese Americans to a hearing prior to relocation, but would not challenge the constitutionality of the internment itself.

Despite pressure from New York, the ACLU-NC became actively involved in the relocation issue, arguing that Executive Order 9066 was fundamentally unconstitutional. Under the Resolution of 1942, the national office objected to the ACLU-NC’s intervention on behalf of Fred Korematsu and Japanese American citizens detained at Tule Lake. As a result of these disputes, the ACLU-NC faced possible disaffiliation from the national organization. Finally, a compromise was reached: local branches could maintain decision-making powers on local issues, leaving the national board the option to disclaim their actions. Likewise, local branches could disclaim a position held by the national office.

Other significant civil liberties fights undertaken in the 1940s included defending conscientious objectors’ right to refuse military service on the grounds of religious freedom, and advocating for the rights of returning Nisei soldiers and other veterans of color.

In the late 1940s and 1950s, national post-war anxieties over Soviet expansion created a political climate hostile to the Left. Under the rubric of national security, an invigorated House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) launched investigations into government and private industry, academic institutions, and the military in order to uncover hidden subversives. Mandatory loyalty oaths and classified government security hearings resulted from this official outpouring of anti-Communist anxiety.

The ACLU-NC actively challenged the various conformity oaths, as well as the authority of federal, state, and local investigating committees to inquire into the associations and affiliations of private citizens. The organization also fought to reinstate workers who had been fired because of their alleged political affiliations and beliefs. In less publicized cases, the ACLU-NC defended gays and lesbians against invasion of privacy, entrapment, and intimidation; fought against the "gentlemen's agreements" directed against Jews; and protested the distribution of religious literature in public schools. In a famous 1957 censorship case, the ACLU-NC defended San Francisco bookseller and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who had been charged with obscenity for selling Allen Ginsburg’s poem Howl.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the ACLU and its northern California affiliate became involved in many of the civil rights and social movements that were sweeping the country. The ACLU-NC defended the civil liberties of students, activists, and demonstrators involved in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, student anti-HUAC demonstrations, and anti-Vietnam war sit-ins, and challenged Proposition 14, an initiative that repealed the Rumford Fair Housing Act of 1963. The Union also defended the rights of women, gays, and lesbians to due process and equality before the law in housing, employment, public accommodations, and child custody cases, while advocating for the rights of the poor and incarcerated, including welfare recipients, prisoners, and patients in mental hospitals. In 1972, the ACLU-NC successfully championed a Privacy Amendment to the state constitution, which helped provide a legal foundation for abortion rights in California.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the ACLU-NC continued to defend and advocate for the rights of immigrants, women, gays and lesbians, and prisoners. The affiliate founded the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, which provided legal support for gays and lesbians in employment discrimination and other cases, while laying the groundwork for state domestic partnership laws. When the HIV/AIDS crisis erupted, the ACLU-NC fought to protect the privacy, rights, and freedoms of HIV-positive people. At the same time, the Union worked to defend and expand access to abortion in California. They actively defended the rights of prisoners of all kinds, lobbied for affirmative action, and defended the reproductive rights of Medi-Cal patients. They fought to protect the rights of immigrants invited to speak as experts, and those protesting oppressive governments in their home countries. They argued on behalf of gay choristers, female boxers, and challenged the exclusivity of the hundreds of years old, male only institution the Bohemian Club. With the rise of the Internet in the 1990s, the ACLU-NC began to address issues of censorship and privacy vis-à-vis computer technologies.

The ACLU-NC is a living organization that continues to provide legal and legislative advocacy for civil liberties in cases involving a wide range of issues, including censorship, police practices, abortion, capital punishment, juvenile rights, criminal justice, and the separation of church and state.