Arthur Garfield Hays and American Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis

FAIN: FT-51327-03

Richard Hamm
SUNY Research Foundation, Albany (Albany, NY 12222-0001)

From the 1920s into the 1950s, Arthur Garfield Hays was a leading advocate of civil liberties in America. Hays was a successful Wall Street lawyer. Government persecution of World War I’s domestic opponents converted Hays to the cause of civil liberties. Hays thought free speech, the right to express any opinion, a positive good and would defend anyone’s right to assert it. His clients ranged widely. Through representation of clients, direct action, speeches, and writings -- often for ACLU -- Hays sought to guarantee all Americans the rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights. I would use the grant to explain Hays’s contributions to the development of civil liberties in the United States.