National Emergency Civil Liberties Commitee

NATIONAL EMERGENCY CIVIL LIBERTIES COMMITTEE. The purpose behind the 1951 launching of the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (ECLC — the “N” was added in 1968) was to fill the void left by existing civil liberties groups — most notably the American Civil Liberties Union, which required board members to sign a loyalty oath and was unwilling to defend targets of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the McCarthy Senate Committee, and the Smith Act who it deemed were actual Communists. The six founders were all noted civil libertarians: theologian Dr. Paul Lehmann, journalist I. F. Stone, retired banker James Imbrie, sociologist and civil rights activist E. Franklin Frazier, professor Henry Pratt Fairchild, and political scientist H. H. Wilson.

The inaugural meeting took place at the New York City apartment of T.O. Thackrey, then the editor of the New York Compass. “The question was whether a new organization was needed to augment the American Civil Liberties Union, but with guts enough to fight the evils of McCarthyism without fear of being sullied by the label of ‘pro-Communist’” Imbrie later recalled.

The organizers hired Clark Foreman, a well-known New Dealer who was then president of the Southern Conference on Human Welfare, to be ECLC’s first executive director. Under his leadership the NECLC played a major role in the successful drive to eliminate HUAC-type investigations, to overturn the Smith Act convictions, and to end travel restrictions on dissidents.

One of its earliest actions was to file an amicus brief on behalf of Paul Robeson, who had been denied a passport by the US State Department. The filing would have a major impact on the organization when its volunteer attorney refused to support the brief, so the group turned to Leonard Boudin of the firm Boudin and Rabinowitz. Boudin would soon be named the committee’s general counsel, while Victor Rabinowitz would handle several key ECLC cases.

Several cases involved protecting citizens from having their passports taken away by the State Department for political reasons. In taking up these cases, ECLC was again opposing the ACLU, which supported the State Department’s efforts to deny passports to those it claimed were Communists. The first ECLC defendants, Einstein associate Otto Nathan and ECLC chair Clark Foreman, were able to reverse the mandate against them by denying they had been members. Rockwell Kent’s case, Kent v. Dulles, was different and more important, as he refused to say whether he had been a member or not. In a landmark decision handed down in 1958, the Supreme Court handed Kent a victory in 1958 with Justice William O. Douglas writing that the right to travel was a basic American liberty.

By the mid-1950s, the organization was supporting several Constitutional tests cases on First Amendment-related issues, among them journalist Harvey (“First with the First”) O’Connor’s refusal to honor a telephone subpoena from McCarthy aide, Roy Cohn. ECLC also supported a Michigan mathematician, Dr. H. Chandler Davis, who refused to testify against friends and associates before HUAC and several other uncooperative witnesses before the Senate and House investigative committees, including Leo Huberman, the editor of Monthly Review and economist Paul Sweezy. Not all its cases were successful. Willard Uphaus, a pacifist, was found guilty for not testifying adequately before the McCarthy Committee. He was convicted and despite ECLC’s efforts, his appeal was rejected, and he spent a year in prison. On the other hand, as a result of ECLC’s efforts, in 1956, the US Supreme Court outlawed state sedition laws. This not only freed Nelson but also Carl Braden who had been jailed in Kentucky for helping an African-American man purchase a house in a white neighborhood.

In 1965, ECLC won a landmark decision against the United States Postal Service in the case of Lamont v. Postmaster General. ECLC had sued on behalf of its chairman, Dr. Corliss Lamont, to halt the Post Office’s practice of opening mail from foreign sources it deemed subversive. The decision would mark the first time in its history that the Supreme Court would decide a case on First Amendment grounds.

With the rise of the civil rights movement, the organization became involved in various court cases, j legal assistance to some of the most militant civil rights organizations. During the Vietnam War period, the NECLC joined in early efforts to have the war declared illegal, and it supported many forms of opposition to the war, giving special attention to the rights of members of the armed forces and draftees, in connection with their right to protest, not just the prosecution of the war but also against the Selective Service system and its conduct of the draft.

The NECLC and the newer NECLC Foundation remained vigorous in the 1970s and 1980s. A major focus of work was to abolish or severely curtail government surveillance of citizens, whether the agency involved was the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, or a local “Red Squad.”

The NECLC was one of the first organizations to call for and campaign for the impeachment of Richard Nixon. While continuing its efforts in the traditional civil rights areas, the NECLC also put considerable energy into preventing the deportation of political refugees to dictatorships in the Caribbean area and Central America.

A list of prominent individuals and organizations given legal defense by the NECLC includes: Alger Hiss, the National Lawyers Guild, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Dr. Corliss Lamont, the United Farm Workers, Dr. Daniel Ellsberg, and Teamsters for Democracy. Especially important to the organization was the case of Hiss, one of the first Freedom of Information lawsuits filed against the FBI and other government agencies. The suit eventually resulted in the release of thousands of government documents pertaining to his case. Based on the information found in the documents, he filed a petition for a “writ of error coram nobis” to overturn the guilty verdict against him, alleging prosecutorial misconduct. Hiss’s petition was denied by the lower courts. His appeals were unsuccessful.

The organization also put out two publications, Rights and the Bill of Rights Journal. Each December, beginning in 1953, it held an annual dinner to raise operating funds. In 1958, it began the practice of using the dinner to announces the winner of its Tom Paine award for outstanding efforts to advance civil liberties. Among the winners were I.F. Stone (1958), Bertrand Russell (1962); Shirley Chisholm (1970); Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (1973), Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden (1974); William O. Douglas (1975). The most controversial choice was Bob Dylan in 1963. During his acceptance speech, his disparaging remarks about the age of so many ECLC supporters, outraged many of the attendees, prompting them to withhold financial support. The speech nearly caused the group to shut down. Dylan later apologized for the comments.

NECLC personalities for many years have been Leonard Boudin (general counsel, 1954–1989), Dr. Corliss Lamont (chairperson, 1965–1997), and Edith Tiger (assistant director, 1953–1969; director, 1970–1998). Early in 1998, Edith Tiger announced that the NECLC would merge with the Center for Constitutional Rights and cease to exist as an independent entity.

National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, Report, 1971–80.

National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee Collected Records. Collection Overview. Swarthmore College Peace Collection. TriCollege Libraries Archives and Manuscripts. http://archives.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/resources/scpc-cdg-a-national_emergency_civil_liberties_comm