Abstract The American Civil Liberties Union Records document the activities of the Union in protecting individual rights from 1920 through 1995. The files contain materials on freedom of speech, expression, and association; due process of law; equality before the law; legal case files; and organizational records. Within these categories files reflect subject areas such as academic freedom, censorship, racial discrimination, aliens' rights, privacy concerns, labor concerns, amnesty, and government...

Scope and Contents

An indictment handed down during the August term against Sally Roberts, a free Black woman, "for selling spiritous liquor without a licence, and for keeping a disorderly house some time in the month of October 1826..."

Scope and Contents Consists of court documents from New York City related to the 1799 trial of Dolly Burrows, an African American woman who was accused and convicted of "stealing" money from her enslaver, Abraham Stansbury. Documents include a jury true bill stating the details of the case and recording a guilty verdict, a guilty plea from Burrows attesting that she took money from her enslaver and signed with her "X," and a statement from Stansbury stating that the money was taken from a store he owned with...

Scope and Contents Consists of a manuscript document from the North Carolina Court of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, that summarizes the case of Margaret Smith, an indentured servant of William Sipards who was accused of giving birth to a child out of wedlock, and shortly thereafter, concealing the death of the infant, who died under unexplained circumstances, by asking a man who was enslaved to her employer to bury it. Notably, Smith was indicted by a jury of twelve...

Scope and Contents Consists of court proceedings for a theft case brought by Samuel Tenney (1748-1816), a white man who was a Federalist member of the United States House of Representatives, against Asa Light, an African American man from Exeter, New Hampshire, under the jurisdiction of justice of the peace William Parker Jr. (1731-1813). Materials include a complaint and warrant for the arrest of Asa Light, who is described in the document as "a boy of colour, labourer...[who] on the twentieth day of...

Scope and Contents Consists of a substantial record concerning an investigation into the death and possible murder of Anthony, a formerly enslaved Black man who had recently been emancipated upon the death of his former enslaver, Isaac N. Robertson, in 1857. It is likely that Anthony died as the result of a racially motivated assault by a white man, though the report is inconclusive. The coroner, Thomas Pugh, states "that from a surgical examination made in the presence of the Jury... his death was caused by a...

Scope and Contents Consists of six court documents related to the apprehension, arraignment, and imprisonment of Ann Porter, an Ohio woman accused and convicted of "murdering her infant child in her womb." At the time, abortion of pregnancy was legal under common law up until the point of "quickening" at which a pregnant person could feel the movements of the fetus. The documents include a manuscript warrant issued by Richard D. George, Justice of the Peace, commanding any constable of Urbana to apprehend...