Democracy, If We Can Keep It: The ACLU's 100-Year Fight for Rights in America

by Ellis Cose

Overview

Published to coincide with the ACLU's centennial, a major new book by the nationally celebrated journalist and bestselling author

For a century, the American Civil Liberties Union has fought to keep Americans in touch with the founding values of the Constitution. As its centennial approached, the organization invited Ellis Cose to become its first ever writer-in-residence, with complete editorial independence.

The result is Cose's groundbreaking Democracy, If We Can Keep It: The ACLU's 100-Year Fight for Rights in America, the most authoritative account ever of America's premier defender of civil liberties. A vivid work of history and journalism, Democracy, If We Can Keep It is not just the definitive story of the ACLU but also an essential account of America's rediscovery of rights it had granted but long denied. Cose's narrative begins with World War I and brings us to today, chronicling the ACLU's role through the horrors of 9/11, the saga of Edward Snowden, and the phenomenon of Donald Trump.

A chronicle of America's most difficult ethical quandaries from the Red Scare, the Scottsboro Boys' trials, Japanese American internment, McCarthyism, and Vietnam, Democracy, If We Can Keep It weaves these accounts into a deeper story of American freedom—one that is profoundly relevant to our present moment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620973837
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	07/07/2020
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Ellis Cose is a former columnist for Newsweek, chairman of the editorial board of the New York Daily News, contributor and critic for Time, and columnist for USA Today. The author of numerous books, including the bestselling The Rage of a Privileged Class, he lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

1 Preaching Peace to a World at War 7

2 The War on Dangerous Speech 27

3 The Year That Shook America and Spawned the ACLU 52

4 Setting Fire to Wisdom and the Origin of Man 75

5 Phony Rapes and a Righteous Purge 107

6 A Yellow Menace, Red Fears, White Racism, and Assimilation 141

7 McCarthy Crosses a Line and Eisenhower Sends Troops to Little Rock 182

8 A Moral Crusade, an Immoral War, and a Forbidden Romance 205

9 Resurrecting a Communist as the Nixon Era Ends 239

10 Nazis, Jews, and the FBI 279

11 Mourning a Founder, Defeating Bork, and Atoning for Internment 296

12 Terrorism, Torture, and the Pursuit of Justice 330

13 Edward Snowden Joins the ACLU 365

14 The Rise of Trump, the Decline of Truth 392

15 Reflections 427

Acknowledgments 439

Notes 441

Index 447

Editorial Reviews

05/11/2020

In this comprehensive and even-handed history of the ACLU, journalist Cose (The Rage of the Privileged Class) details the organization’s inner workings as well as milestones in its mission to protect civil rights. Exploring the ACLU’s involvement in the early 20th-century labor movement, the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, school desegregation, Vietnam War–era draft resistance, the post-9/11 “war on terror,” and other social issues, Cose highlights the idealism of its leaders, as well as internal divisions over its goals and methods. He notes, for example, the forced removal of a founding board member with Communist Party ties in 1940, and “soul searching” over the decision to defend the First Amendment rights of white supremacists who rallied in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. Cose contends that a “decline of truth” in the current political moment poses a unique challenge to the ACLU, which must find a way to continue its core mission of defending free speech while also protecting American democracy itself. Cose covers an impressive amount of ground, though some of the granular details about personnel matters feel superfluous. Still, this judicious account reveals just how integral the ACLU has been to the past century of American history. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Democracy, If We Can Keep It:
"A well-researched chronicle of democratic activism."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Comprehensive and even-handed . . . this judicious account reveals just how integral the ACLU has been to the past century of American history."
—Publishers Weekly

"Cose's book is an excellent choice for anyone seeking to understand the ACLU as an organization and for those wanting to explore how the fight for civil liberties has evolved and helped to shape the society we have today."
—Library Journal

"This brisk, sometimes breathless history provides a helpful introduction to these important issues."
—Booklist

"The dramatic, turbulent, colorful, controversial, and, in many cases, little-known story of how the ACLU responded to the urgent need to defend the Constitution and how it has persisted in that mission for the last hundred years is told in an engaging new book by Ellis Cose entitled Democracy, If We Can Keep It: The ACLU's 100-Year Fight for Rights in America."
—Stephen Rohde, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Ellis Cose's extraordinary exploration of the ACLU's century of work is a timely and timeless read for all stewards of social justice."
—Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation

"Ellis Cose's elegant, masterly history of the ACLU is also a report on our country's chronic autoimmune disorder, in which the system risks its own health in the act of 'saving ' itself. One comes away from this unflinching account with the urgent sense that there are no simple diagnoses or cures, that democracy is an organism in a constant cycle of decay and repair—and that survival is not inevitable."
—Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, Carry Me Home

"Over the last century, it's astonishing how closely the history of the ACLU tracks with the history of the United States. It's all here in Ellis Cose's brisk, compelling, and urgent account of a vital champion of democracy."
—Jonathan Alter, author, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

"Ellis Cose tells the story of the women and men who fought back when political speech became an imprisonable offense, when state and local authorities enabled violent mobs, and when courts ruled against peaceful protests and strikes—offering hard-boiled hope that we can transcend today's tyranny too."
—Elizabeth Green, co-founder and CEO, Chalkbeat

"In this engaging and important book, Ellis Cose tells the story of the ACLU's century-long commitment to ensuring that America obeys its own laws."
—Richard Smith, president, Pinkerton Foundation, former CEO and editor of Newsweek magazine

"For anyone who is concerned about the decline of civil liberties and seeks to understand the magnitude of what is at risk, this book is an essential read."
—Calvin Sims, president, International House, and former New York Times foreign correspondent

"There are no easy answers for a democracy in troubled times, but if we are to 'keep it,' we surely need the nuance, honesty, intelligence, and memory that this book offers."
—Jerry Kang, inaugural vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion, and distinguished professor of law and Asian American studies, UCLA

"More than a history of the ACLU, Ellis Cose has written a concise history of the United States in the twentieth century as seen through the prism of the fundamental rights that it claims, and so often fails, to uphold."
—Carroll Bogert, president, the Marshall Project

From the Publisher

06/01/2020

In this latest work, Cose (The Rage of a Privileged Class) provides a comprehensive history of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from its founding to present day. While the ACLU's chronology is most often identified by its cases rather than its leadership, this meticulously detailed volume describes changes the ACLU has experienced internally over the last century, including priorities, conflicts, and decision making. Readers are left with the impression of a complex organization that attracts those who believe fervently in the cause of civil liberties and has made an enormous impact on the country, but has sometimes struggled with growing pains and internal disagreement. The early years of the ACLU's founding are explored thoroughly, and the later chapters covering events of the 21st century feature extensive interviews that provide rich insight into the changes they have undergone and what might come next. The book makes a solid companion to Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman's Fight of the Century. VERDICT Cose's book is an excellent choice for anyone seeking to understand the ACLU as an organization and for those wanting to explore how the fight for civil liberties has evolved and helped to shape the society we have today—Sarah Schroeder, Univ. of Washington Bothell

Library Journal

2020-04-05
A history of the organization that has fought to protect the Bill of Rights for the past century.

In 1919, in the aftermath of World War I, “xenophobia, racism, and the war between management and labor” erupted violently, leading to the founding of the American Civil Liberties Union the next year. Dedicated to championing “in the highest courts the civil liberties of persons and organizations,” the ACLU has been involved in labor’s right to “picket, boycott, and strike”; Vietnam War dissent; civil rights infringements; women’s rights (in 1972, the organization tapped Ruth Bader Ginsburg to head its Women’s Rights Project); and suing on behalf of mental patients, the disabled, and prisoners, among many other issues involving its core mission to protect democratic freedoms. Cose, chairman of the editorial board of the New York Daily News and contributor to USA Today, Newsweek, and Time, draws on ACLU archives, interviews, and published sources to offer a thorough, balanced recounting of the organization’s often turbulent century. Throughout its history, it participated in some celebrated cases—e.g., the Scopes trial, testing Tennessee’s prohibition of the teaching of evolution; and the trial of the so-called Scottsboro boys, nine black youths charged with raping two white girls on a freight train in Alabama. The ACLU helped NAACP lawyers prep for arguments in Brown v. Board of Education but was otherwise not directly involved; in the 1960s, writes the author, “it had rarely been on the front lines” of racial issues. The Trump era has energized an organization pledged to remain nonpartisan. “As of early 2019,” writes Cose, “the ACLU had initiated 186 legal actions against the Trump administration, including 92 lawsuits.” In the 2018 midterms, it supported many ballot initiatives (and candidates) that had an impact on civil liberties. Cose traces the ACLU’s growth, management challenges, and philosophical conflicts, through which the organization has maintained itself as a strong defender of democracy.

A well-researched chronicle of democratic activism.

Kirkus Reviews