ROGER BALDWIN, 1884-1981
Haskell, Gordon
Roger Baldwin was one of those extraordinary men who leave a permanent imprint on their society. His death at age 97 last summer left behind an America significantly more tolerant of dissent and...
...This ambivalence he shared with a host of men and women of good will whose revulsion against inequality, the exploitation and suppression of workers, farmers, and radical movements in the capitalist world paralyzed their critical faculties with respect to its anticapitalist opponents...
...When he retired from the ACLU, it was to devote the rest of his life to advocating civil liberties in the international arena...
...In May 1917 he organized the Bureau for Conscientious Objectors as a subdivision of the American Union Against Militarism, and offered the Bureau's services to the War Department in dealing with these objectors to military service...
...Coming from good, solid WASP backgrounds, he and most of his close ACLU co-workers felt quite at home in dealing with government officials, even at the highest level, who happened to disagree on a specific policy...
...This included a long period during which he combined a fierce defense of civil liberties in his own country with an uneasy apologia for the suppression of dissent in Russia and within the world Communist movement...
...Once again, he was brought to the defense of civil liberties as essential to a struggle in which it was a means rather than the end itself...
...When he was released in June 1919, he spent a few months as a casual worker, riding the freights, washing dishes, and as a harvest hand...
...He was captivated by the free-wheeling militancy and independence of the Wobblies, and deeply impressed by an Emma Goldman lecture...
...Once civil liberties law had been "made" by Supreme Court decisions, its day-to-day enforcement could be left to others...
...He left us a more open society and a living organization to help keep it that way—the American Civil Liberties Union...
...For 30 years Roger Baldwin guided the ACLU, through the Palmer Raids, the labor struggles of the '20s and '30s, through World War II with its Japanese deportations, and the first decade of the cold war...
...This offer, which was accepted, was characteristic of Baldwin's method of working...
...Baldwin has described himself, in his youth and early manhood, as "the supporter in spirit if not in fact of every force I thought headed for the abolition of poverty, the achievement of equality and the triumph of justice...
...His death at age 97 last summer left behind an America significantly more tolerant of dissent and more open to change because of his life's work than it would otherwise have been...
...Only after the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939 did Baldwin publicly recognize that the dream of equality and freedom, which had kindled the Russian Revolution, had been turned into the horror of totalitarianism...
...He was always an activist who sought to combat the repression of individuals engaged in social struggles for objectives he shared...
...He decided that the focus of ACLU activity (it was founded in January 1920) should be to defend the rights of workers to organize...
...GORDON HASKELL...
...and public opinion could be influenced by dramatic, well publicized statements or actions of important individuals...
...A handful of able attorneys could persuade the courts...
...Thus Baldwin had little interest in building a mass civil liberties organization that could be available for grass-roots defense of individuals' rights or lobbying, though he was delighted to see the ACLU develop into such an organization in his lifetime...
...Baldwin served a brief prison term for refusing to register for the draft...
...After an early career in the field of criminal probation and parole, his attention shifted to opposition to militarism as the United States drifted toward World War I. He focused on the specific problems of nonreligious conscientious objectors for whom no legal provision had been made in the draft law...
...He served as adviser on civil liberties to General MacArthur in Japan and General Clark in Germany...
...it was to set the ACLU "style" for years to come...
...Baldwin's commitment to civil liberties did not stem from a general philosophical concern with the relations between the individual and society...
...He urged that a majority of the ACLU board members should be "those directly engaged in the labor struggle who know the first-hand facts and who represent large constituencies . . . " (it didn't happen...
...Roger Baldwin's tenacity, wit, intelligence, and fierce adherence to the cause of justice and freedom will be sorely missed by all of us who had the good luck to know him...
Vol. 29 • January 1982 • No. 1
