Early years Baldwin was born in
Wellesley, Massachusetts, the son of Lucy Cushing (Nash) and Frank Fenno Baldwin. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at
Harvard University; afterwards, he moved to
St. Louis on the advice of
Louis D. Brandeis. There he taught sociology at
Washington University in St. Louis, worked as a
social worker and became chief
probation officer of the
St. Louis Juvenile Court. He also co-wrote
Juvenile Courts and Probation with
Bernard Flexner at this time; this book became very influential in its era, and was, in part, the foundation of Baldwin's national reputation.
Career Baldwin was a member of the
American Union Against Militarism (AUAM), which opposed American involvement in
World War I. After the passage of the
Selective Service Act of 1917, Baldwin called for the AUAM to create a legal division to protect the rights of
conscientious objectors. On July 1, 1917, the AUAM created the
Civil Liberties Bureau (CLB), headed by Baldwin. The CLB separated from the AUAM on October 1, 1917, renaming itself the
National Civil Liberties Bureau, with Baldwin as director. In 1920, NCLB was renamed the American Civil Liberties Union, with Baldwin continuing as the ACLU's first executive director. In the meantime, on 30 October 1918, as a conscientious objector himself, refusing even to register for the draft, undergo medical examination, or accept any
alternative service such as farming, was sentenced at the
Federal Court in
New York City to a year in a
penitentiary. As director of ACLU, Baldwin was integral to the shape of the association's early character; it was under Baldwin's leadership that the ACLU undertook some of its most famous cases, including the
Scopes Trial, the
Sacco and Vanzetti murder trial, and its challenge to the ban on
James Joyce's
Ulysses. Baldwin retired from the ACLU leadership in 1950. He remained active in politics for the rest of his life; for example, he co-founded the International League for the Rights of Man, which is now known as the
International League for Human Rights. In St. Louis, Baldwin had been greatly influenced by the radical social movement of the
anarchist Emma Goldman. He joined the
Industrial Workers of the World. Roger Baldwin oversaw, documented and supplied funding for a large number of defense cases for I.W.W. members and investigations throughout the United States. A fully accessible archive of his correspondence with I.W.W branches, investigators and attorneys has been published by Princeton's Mudd Manuscript Library. In 1924, Attorney General
Harlan F. Stone had the newly-appointed
Bureau of Investigation Director
J. Edgar Hoover meet with Baldwin to reach an agreement regarding the limits of the Bureau's power. Baldwin wrote to Stone that Hoover "meets any suggestion which any of us could possibly make". In 1927, he had visited the Soviet Union and wrote a book,
Liberty Under the Soviets. Later, however, as more and more information came out about
Joseph Stalin's regime in the
Soviet Union, Baldwin became more and more disillusioned with communism and in 1953 called it "A NEW SLAVERY" (capitalized in the original). He condemned "the inhuman communist police state tyranny, forced labor." In the 1940s, Baldwin led the campaign to purge the ACLU of Communist Party members.
Later years In 1968,
Washington University awarded Baldwin an honorary doctorate of Laws degree.
President Jimmy Carter awarded Baldwin the
Medal of Freedom on January 16, 1981.
Death and legacy A resident of
Oakland, New Jersey, Baldwin died of
heart failure on August 26, 1981, at
The Valley Hospital in
Ridgewood, New Jersey. He is the subject of
John G. Avildsen's 1982 documentary
Traveling Hopefully. He is the narrator of the 1979 documentary
The Wobblies. ==See also==