Roger Baldwin’s Conviction Overturned by New Jersey High Court
The high court of New Jersey on this day overturned the conviction of ACLU leader Roger Baldwin for his role in a demonstration in support of a silk workers’ strike in Patterson, New Jersey (see December 17, 1924). The decision was a remarkable event in the strong anti-labor context of the 1920s.
Baldwin had been convicted of unlawful assembly for leading a parade in support of the strikers. In reversing the conviction of Baldwin and eight others, the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals found “an utter absence” of evidence that Baldwin’s actions had been unlawful. Baldwin had been facing a six-month jail sentence if his conviction had been upheld.
The decision was remarkable in the context of the 1920s, when both police and courts across the country were almost universally hostile to pro-labor and other demonstrations. The ACLU held a number of demonstrations where people attempted to read the Constitution or the Bill of Rights to dramatize the denial of First Amendment rights, and were immediately arrested. See, for example, March 23, 1920; October 12, 1920; and March 17, 1923.
The most famous of these “reading” protests occurred on May 15, 1923 in San Pedro, California (now a part of Los Angeles, where the noted author Upton Sinclair was arrested for attempting to read the Bill of Rights at a rally in support of striking marine transport workers affiliated with the radical I.W.W. Sinclair was seized and hauled off to jail by the police. The event led to the founding of the Southern California ACLU the following year.
Learn more about Roger Baldwin and the ACLU in the 1920s: Samuel Walker, In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU (1990)
Learn about the use of labor injunctions to suppress the labor movement in the 1920s here