Emergency Civil Liberties Committee Denounces HUAC Investigation
Clark Foreman, Director of the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (ECLC) on this day denounced an impending HUAC investigation of the Fund For Social Analysis. The Fund was a private group devoted to promoting the study of Marxist theory. In a letter to HUAC chairperson Rep. Francis E. Walter, Democrat of Pennsylvania, Foreman condemned HUAC for the “damage” it is “doing to our country.”
Promoting Marxist theory violates no federal law, and the HUAC investigation was typical of the committee’s assault on freedom of expression and association.
The ECLC was a small civil liberties group founded on October 8, 1951 by Corliss Lamont because of his dissatisfaction with the ACLU. Lamont had been a long-time ACLU national board member, but felt it was not doing enough to oppose anti-Communist Cold War measures.
In perhaps the most famous incident involving the ECLC, the group gave its Tom Paine Award to Bod Dylan who was rapidly emerging as a folk music artist and the composer of memorable and still-famous protest songs. At the December 13, 1963 ECLC annual dinner, Dylan got up to speak, and feeling obviously uncomfortable about the award and the largely white and elderly audience proceeded to insult both the group and its members. The audience booed him as he left. (See the link below about the incident.)
In 1998 the ECLC (by then the National Emergency Civil Liberties Union) merged with the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Learn more about Corliss Lamont here
And about Lamont and the ECLC here
Read Lamont’s book on the Cold War: Corliss Lamont, Freedom is as Freedom Does
Learn about the famous Bob Dylan incident here