The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; 4155; Roger Baldwin

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. High on the list of American obsessions one would have to put the obsession with staying young. The health magazines today are full of catchy-recipes for avoiding illness and a decline of vigor in old age. Well,--here is one man`s recipe: involvement, controversy, unpopular causes, and good genes. His name is Roger Baldwin, and he recently celebrated his ninety-fifth birthday. As the founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, his life is a panorama of liberalism in this century and a passionate, sometimes contradictory desire to make his countrymen believe-- and live-- the promises of the Bill of Rights. So tonight, a conversation with Roger Baldwin. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: The Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee, Clarence Darrow arguing against William Jennings Bryan over the right to teach evolution in public schools. That was the first big case for Roger Baldwin and his American Civil Liberties Union. Baldwin,- a social worker in St. Louis, had set it up to protect the legal rights of World War I conscientious objectors, of which he was one himself. But after the war it was reorganized and its sights broadened. After Scopes came the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, two anarchists accused of murdering two factory workers in Massachusetts; then the nine Scottsboro boys case, blacks accused of raping two white women in the South in 1931; followed by the famous Lady Chatterly`s Lover and Ulysses censorship cases.

These were all leftist causes, and that has been the ACLU`s identification through the years, but it has represented some other types, too. It fought for the organizing rights of the Wobblies, the Socialist Inter national Workers of the World; and for the right of Henry Ford to advise his workers not to unionize. The ACLU has also gone to court numerous times .to defend the right of the Ku Klux Klan and similar groups to meet and demonstrate.

Roger Baldwin was the full-time director of the ACLU until 1950, and he still serves on the organization`s advisory council. He was the oldest of seven children, born to Mayflower descendants, upper middle-class shoe manufacturers. He graduated from Harvard with a Masters in anthropology, then worked as a social worker, a probation officer, joined the early trade union movement, worked in a steel mill, got involved in the international rights movement and some Communist causes in the `30s; he`s always loved to cook, play the piano and go canoeing, all of which he still does regularly. But he`s given up two other passions, hiking and horseback riding. And he`s with Robin in New York. Robin?

MacNEIL: Mr. Baldwin, good evening. Although you`ve been retired from the ACLU for nearly thirty years, you`ve obviously stayed very close to its proceedings. Recently the Union has been losing members over its support for the right of the Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois. Did you agree with that support?

ROGER BALDWIN: Oh, entirely. This was a basic principle, that we would defend everybody`s rights without distinction, so long as they didn`t use violence or advocate immediate incitement to violence. And Skokie was a test, it was a classic case. Just exactly the right thing to prove that we`ve meant what we said.

MacNEIL: Why did some ACLU members find it hard to understand that case?

BALDWIN: Well, mostly Jewish members resigned as a result of it because it was a most provocative confrontation in a largely Jewish community with people of whom Jews had the bitterest memories and the most active opposition. It wasn`t surprising. It was a very unpleasant case for us, but it was one that we had to take. Fortunately there was no confrontation because the Nazis moved to Chicago, where they got a federal court decision in their favor; so we didn`t have to see the thing, through to the bitter end -- and it would have been a bitter one. We lost probably -- oh, twenty, twenty-five thousand members, and we maybe lost fifty, a hundred thousand dollars. But we got a lot of them back when people realized that there was no confrontation.

MacNEIL: Another current case is one in which the ACLU has filed an amicus brief on abortion which would have the effect of permitting teenagers to have abortions without parental consent. Do you support that one?

BALDWIN: Oh, yes. The ACLU has taken the position right along that abortion was a matter of choice for the woman, whether to have the baby or not to have the baby. And we think teenagers should make that decision for themselves; when they get pregnant they should make that decision and not ask Poppa and Momma about it.

MacNEIL: Down to what age?

BALDWIN: Any age. We didn`t make any distinctions at all. We regarded the right to abortion as a woman`s right to choose in the most vital choice she has to make.

MacNEIL: Is the ACLU, as you, watch it these days--which are calmer times than during the `60s, when its membership increased enormously -is it `suffering from a lack of vital causes these days?

BALDWIN: There`s always a vital cause in civil liberties; there is not a conspicuous cause today, such as we had with the impeachment of Nixon, which brought us a great many members, more members than any other single act I think we ever did, back. But we are always faced with a confrontation of one sort or another between government and citizens` rights. I think we`ve got more cases in the Supreme Court of the United States on many so- called small issues that involve the rights of citizens, the attempt to draw the line between where the government has a right to regulate and where we citizens have a right to be free of government regulation.

MacNEIL: Do you think that because of the lack of conspicuous issues, as you call them, that there is the spirit today to keep the. American Civil Liberties Union and what it stands for vigorous?

BALDWIN: The test of a democracy is really the spirit of its people. And I think in the United States we have maintained, through our whole history from the beginning, enough spirit in enough people so that the Bill of Rights never died. Liberty`s in the hearts of people, it`s not on a piece of paper; and we`ve always adhered to the principle that the ACLU`s major business was keeping that spirit alive -- publicity, education, getting more members, going into court and teaching people through the courts what their rights are. Now we`ve got more cases, as I say, in the Supreme Court today, I think, than any other organization has before the Court. There are cases like the seven dirty words that was tested a year or so ago in the Supreme Court.

MacNEIL: What words you can say on the radio and television.

BALDWIN: That`s right. What words-you can`t. And the ACLU opted on the side of freedom; I didn`t agree with it. I think there are some words you must not use on the public wavelengths.

MacNEIL: Why is that?

BALDWIN: Well, I think it`s too offensive. You wouldn`t put those words up on a billboard in a public street; it`d be down in a few minutes. Now, why bring it into your parlor and your library? It`s just the same thing. It`s a special statute of Congress. It says, while we do not censor radio and television, we do not permit offensive words. It was a special statute, and the Supreme Court upheld it.

MacNEIL: Is the ACLU suffering because, identified in the popular mind as it is with liberal causes, liberal causes seem to be somewhat in retreat? The liberal spirit of the country seems to be in retreat.

BALDWIN: I don`t think that atmosphere of the country, so-called move to the right, makes very much difference. We don`t have a left in the United States...

MacNEIL: You agree there is a move to the right, do you? You sense that.

BALDWIN: There is a move to the right, yes. But on the whole the country is liberal, the Carter election showed that. I mean, Carter was advocating all kinds of reforms, and he got elected. And he`s tried to maintain himself, with some difficulty, on the basis of his platform.

MacNEIL: Why is it so difficult -- so difficult that even members who join the ACLU and then disagree with something and resign, find it difficult to absorb -- why is it so difficult to make people understand your conception of what the Bill of Rights means in terms of free speech -- freedom of speech to speak thoughts that are abhorrent to any one of us?

BALDWIN: Well, because of the natural instinct of people -- two instincts: everybody wants to be free to say what they want to say; they want to associate with their colleagues in organizations, and they want the free press, they want to be able to read and see and hear everything. But they don`t think those other people ought to have them because other people may be Communists, may be different, may be disturbers of the peace. They don`t accept the principle of tolerance for others which they demand for themselves. Now, this is a common human trait. I think it`s always been true that we ask for ourselves what we will not concede to others. And it`s a phenomenon we`re familiar with; but it hasn`t much affected the results in the United States because when it really comes down to action, people don`t want to lock up these opponents. We never really did outlaw the Communist Party in the United States, although there`s enormous pressure to do it. And we just stopped at the point at which we would really betray our Bill of Rights. We didn`t betray it.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Mr. Baldwin, let`s look back for a few minutes on these past sixty years of the ACLU. First, is there any one particular case that stands out to you as being the most important in terms of its impact on civil liberties in this country?

BALDWIN: Yes, sir, there were two important cases. They were historic, they were epochal. The first one was the National Labor Relations Board decision in 1938 in which the Supreme Court validated collective bargaining under government auspices for trade union recognition. Now, that ended all of the long record of bloody violence and conflict between employers and employees and put the industrial disputes around the bargaining table. Since that time we`ve had really no mass strikes such as we used to have, marked by the violence of the 1920s and 1930s. That brought what industrial peace we`ve got. We have strikes, of course; but we have solutions now, largely by law. And the second decision was the 1954 decision on school segregation, in which the Supreme Court decided -- and unanimously decided -- that you could not have equal and separate accommodations, in schools or anything else. The whole principle was abolished.

And that helped to produce -along with the great crusade of Martin Luther King for grassroots support among the colored population -- that produced the civil rights movement of the 1960s and was responsible, very largely, for the enormous gains that have been made since for equality of people regardless of race. We`ve got a long way to go, but we`re right on the road.

LEHRER: And you think the ACLU deserves major credit for those two cases, right?

BALDWIN: No, we don`t take credit for those two. A lot of these cases we were in as amicus, as they call it, a friend of the court. We filed briefs in almost every single case of this character, but in that race case the NAACP was the prime mover. And in the labor case in 1938 it was the trade unions themselves. But we always get into these cases on a single theory that the public interest has to be represented, whatever the litigants themselves are claiming. Now, what the trade unions may claim or what the NAACP may claim is after all their primary interest. But the public interest, which is more than their interests, is the one that we try to defend because we interpret these cases in terms of the Bill of Rights for everybody.

LEHRER: One of the criticisms, as you know, of the ACLU and you through the years is, Hey, who appointed you to protect the public interest, to make the decision as to what`s the public interest?

BALDWIN: You don`t have to appoint citizens to defend the public interest; every one of us is obligated to defend it. Some do. We have other organizations; we`re not the only one. We`re just the oldest one, and perhaps the most active one. But there are others. The American Bar Association, the Council of Churches ...I could name dozens of them who often do express the public interest and go into court to say so.

LEHRER: Was the Scopes case important from a legal standpoint, or was that mostly show biz?

BALDWIN: Well, it didn`t come out as important as a later case on the same issue came out, when the Supreme Court decided it some years later. But it was enormously important from the point of view of public opinion because that case not only was aimed at stopping the teaching of evolution but it was aimed also at making the story in Genesis the only legitimate explanation of how we all got here. And that`s what the law did.

LEHRER: You and the ACLU kind of solicited Scopes on that case, didn`t you?-

BALDWIN: Oh, yes.

LEHRER: Tell me about that. How did that work? What did you do to get that going?

BALDWIN: Well, we did often in other cases as well as this one. When we read in the newspapers that the State of Tennessee had passed a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution and establishing Genesis as the state religion, we offered to take to court any teacher who would challenge it. And we got a telephone call from Tennessee from a man who said, "I`ve got a teacher, and he`ll go to court." And young Mr. John Scopes came up to New York and consulted our lawyers, and we figured that we could help him. Especially after William Jennings Bryan volunteered to prosecute for the State of Tennessee, we got Clarence Darrow, knowing that Clarence Darrow was a great champion of evolution and an opponent of Mr. Bryan`s fundamentalism. So the big show went on as the result of that.

LEHRER: You know, with its leftist reputation, did you and the ACLU intentionally go out in the years back to, Hey, let`s find us some right wing causes, some right-wing people to represent as a kind of window dressing or to establish some credibility?

BALDWIN: No. No window dressing. We would have defended them if they had accepted our services. I had some correspondence with the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan as early as 1922, and some later attentions also from him, in which we had offered, on the basis of newspaper accounts, to defend the right of the Ku Klux Klan to parade without masks, but even in their nightgowns and pillowcases, and burn a fiery cross, as long as they didn`t openly advocate or practice violence. And we had some correspondence, as I say, not window dressing -- correspondence in which we were really genuinely committed to defend them if they wanted us. You know we defended the Nazis in Skokie recently; there was no window dressing about that. That window-dressing cost us fifty to a hundred thousand dollars.

LEHRER: Yes, sir. Robin?

MacNEIL: Can I ask you a few personal questions, Mr. Baldwin? I`ve read you said -- in fact, you told our reporter, Anita Harris -- there isn`t very much fear in you. Most people do have quite a lot of fear one way and another. Can you explain why you do not? You`ve got yourself into a lot of scrapes over the years, one way and another, and that hasn`t bothered you?-

BALDWIN: Well, I think that fear is one of those emotions that grows out of a lack of self-confidence. And I`ve always had self-confidence, not just because I thought I was right all the time - I made many mistakes, and I was wrong lots of times -- but because I thought I was always trying to do the right thing. And I don`t think if you think you`re trying to do the right thing you`re fearful. Fearful of what? Fearful of interference, of criticism, hostility? I never minded hostility, I expected it always. This is a highly controversial business I`m in, if you could call it a business.(Laughing.) It`s always inviting opposition. The best way to indicate it is that no Supreme Court decision in a civil liberties case has failed to be either five-four or six-three, or something of that sort; there`s always the other side. And I respect the other side.

MacNEIL: Would you have had as much self-confidence had you not been born into a relatively well-to-do family in Boston with an established social position?

BALDWIN: I think it helped.

MacNEIL: You think it did.

BALDWIN: I think it helped .If you grow up with the assurance that you and your background represent a certain kind of stability and a self-assurance that goes with it, I think it helps, as against the boy from over the tracks.

MacNEIL: What are Americans most afraid of, do you think, apart from physical things like being run over by a car? What are they most afraid of spiritually?

BALDWIN: Well, of course they`ve been afraid of war; they should be afraid of war. And they have been afraid of Communism. I think that`s gone down now. And what that represents really is not Communism as a principle, but it is a fear of upsetting our own society, the American way of life. We don`t want to change it. And while they`re not fearful of a little change,, they`re fearful of revolutionary change. And no revolutionary movement, no left movement has prospered in the United States, ever.

MacNEIL: Are they fearful of nonconformism?

BALDWIN: Oh, well, I`m a nonconformist. I think that`s what makes democracy vital, what makes it grow. It`s only the people that have got new ideas and new forces and new proposals that change society, and society`s always in the process of changing; should be. It always can be better. You never get to a point where you couldn`t improve it.

MacNEIL: I`m interested in your independence of mind, and something you said in your biography, or to your biographer, intrigued me. You said that you had never liked being in love, which you`d experienced a number of times, because you didn`t want to be possessed. Could you talk about that a bit?

BALDWIN:(Laughing.) It seems to me that when is leading a life with a variety of experience in it, to concentrate all your attention and emotions on a single person and a single experience is depriving your self of many other experiences. And I think you should have a number of loves, and there are many different interests that ... variety is the essential basis of good and happy living, and I think most people who get in love, they get out of it. And they love instead of being in love. In love is a possession. You possess, somebody possesses you. Not so good, not so good.

MacNEIL: People are very intrigued and absorbed by knowing what the personal habits are of people who`ve lived as many years as you have. Do you smoke?

BALDWIN: No, I quit that quite a while ago. I should have quit it earlier.

MacNEIL: Do you drink?

BALDWIN: Only a glass of wine or so; I don`t care much about alcohol.

MacNEIL: Do you have food foibles?

BALDWIN: No, I can get along without alcohol and red meat and quite a number of other things, but I`m very normal in all those habits. I have no fads and fancies about things. I couldn`t give anybody any advice how to get old.

MacNEIL:(Laughing.) Thank you. Jim?

LEHRE R:(Laughs.)Switching from love and food, Mr. Baldwin, back to politics for a final moment here, has your personal political philosophy undergone any changes since the 1920s when you first began?

BALDWIN: Oh, yes, quite a number of changes. I`ve always been an adherent of the general American outlook on democracy; and our institutions -- I think this country has been extraordinarily fortunate in being able to maintain its original commitment, the Bill of Rights and our Constitution, all these years. Except for the Civil War, we`ve done very well-with it. And I`m in that sense both committed and happy with it. But I`ve changed my views; I was more or less favorable to the Soviet Union and what it was attempting to do in creating a society of what they call freedom and equality, with the dominant interest that of the working class. I`ve been strongly favorable to trade unions. I have come to see that trade unions can also create difficulties for us. I should say that my philosophy, while fundamentally it has been always democratic and liberal, and sometimes radical -- in some respects radical -- that I`ve changed only as the times have made differences.

LEHRER: Well, in today`s definitions, do you still consider yourself a radical?

BALDWIN: Well, radical is a strange and misused word. Not politically. I am ethically radical. I believe in the Sermon on the Mount, I believe in non- violence, I believe in returning good for evil, if you could, difficult as it were; I`m not so sure about the other cheek, but ...the other cheek, yes, the other cheek also. Because the general principle that law and non- resistance overcome evil is good, and we`re going to get more of it in the world. We`re going to get more law in the world and less violence. Doesn`t look like it in the middle of the biggest arms race the world has ever seen, but we`re also progressing toward world law at the very same time.

LEHRER: You said a moment ago that at one time you were very fond of what was going on in the Soviet Union, and you did flirt for a while there with Communism. What`s your assessment of how Communism has done since it all began back in the early 1900s?

BALDWIN: Well, Communism has always been, ever since the Russian revolution, expressed in a dictatorial form of government, the way fascism was expressed, the way military dictatorships are expressed today. And I`m totally opposed to dictatorship of any sort, whether it`s Communist or fascist or anything else. And it`s that evil in Communism that I oppose primarily. The general goals of Communism, for equality and freedom and all the things they say they believe in is good; I hope they`ll get there someday. They haven`t got there yet.

LEHRER: As a movement, how would you assess its success?

BALDWIN:I think Communism has succeeded only in countries where other systems failed. The Chinese warlord system in China, for instance, and the general disruption of life in China produced the Communist revolution. The other crowd could not succeed in serving the Chinese people. The Russians were the same way under the czars. One would have to say, I suppose, that the Russian people and the Chinese people are probably, in their own opinion, better off than they were under the old regime; and it`s been a terrible price they`ve paid in terms of upheaval and death and exile and people who emigrated.

LEHRER: The issues that are still unresolved out there in the civil liberties area, some of which you mentioned to Robin at the beginning: personally, when you read about them or somebody tells you about them, do you care as much about them as you did back in the `20s?

BALDWIN: Well, I`m not professionally involved...

LEHRER: No, I mean personally.

BALDWIN: -Personally. Yes, I do care about them. I don`t have to act and do anything about it and demonstrate it, the way I used to have to do it. Any time any of these incidents happened I used to run to the fire right away. I was my own fire department.

LEHRER: Do you sometimes wish you could still do that, or want to do that?

BALDWIN: Yes.(Laughing.) I do feel that way, but after all, when you`re retired for some time and got the feeling that I do today that the international situation is the essential one, the kind of thing that our government has done in the human rights field, the kind of thing that Carter has done in the human rights field in cutting off American aid from countries that oppress their own citizens -- I think these new human rights dispensations are really the key to the future.

LEHRER: All right; thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Thank you very much, Mr. Baldwin. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: That`s all for tonight. We`ll be back tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.