ACLU Demands Inquiry into Missing Files in Dismissed Birth Control and Censorship Cases
The ACLU on this day wrote a strong letter to Chief Magistrate William MacAdoo of New York City demanding an inquiry into missing files and materials from two anti-civil liberties criminal cases which were both dismissed the previous year.
One case involved a “scandalous” April 15, 1929 police raid on the Clinical Research Bureau, a birth control clinic founded by Margaret Sanger. The files included some sensitive private medical information about the clinic’s patients
The other case involved the seizure of The Well of Loneliness, a novel by Radclyffe Hall with a lesbian theme, in a raid by John Sumner, head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, the leading anti-smut group in the city, if not the entire country. Repeated requests for the return of the seized books had not been answered.
The ACLU letter argued that a full inquiry into the actions of Magistrate Albert H. Vitale, who heard both cases, was needed to ensure the “protection of citizens of this community against illegal proceedings.”
Read a biography of Sanger: Ellen Chesler, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America (1992)
Read: Samuel Walker, In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU (1990)
Learn about The Well of Loneliness: Diana Souhami, The Trials of Radclyffe Hall (1999)
Read the ACLU FBI File (not the complete file): http://vault.fbi.gov/ACLU