Lessons from the Civil Rights Movement

Yahoo! News today covered the story of how the Birmingham News recently found a box filled with photos from the Civil Rights era that were never published. The paper basically felt (then) that the whole business was just embarassing and that if they ignored it, it wasn't really happening and would go away. Eventually the NY Times and the AP got in and made it a national story, forcing them to cover it to at least some extent, but it took a long time for that attitude to come around. This weekend, they printed some of them in the paper, and the rest are at http://www.al.com/unseen if you want to go take a look, but have patience, that server's getting massacred.

Anyway, while I was looking at one of those pictures, it mentioned something about "after the NAACP was outlawed in Alabama in 1956," which was something I never knew. So I did a little research. The then-AG of Alabama, who later became governor, got a court there stopping the NAACP from conducting business in the state. At issue was a state law that required foreign (out of state) corporations to "qualify" before conducting business. The business? Trying to help blacks enroll in public schools. The complaint that got the injunction said that the NAACP was "causing irreparable injury to the property and civil rights of the residents and citizens of the State of Alabama."

Only 50 years ago. Wow. So, the NAACP argued their activities weren't covered under the state law, and that the law was suppressing their first ammendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly. The state then subpoenaed a bunch of records, including most notably the membership rolls of the NAACP, which understandably refused to turn them over. They were held in contempt. The NAACP moved to dissolve the contempt order on constitutional grounds, but the court refused to hear the argument as they were in contempt. Catch-22!

So the NAACP went to the US Supreme Court, which dismissed the contempt violation. Back to Alabama, where the judge said the USSC ruled based on a "mistaken premise" and found the NAACP in contempt again, which the USSC reversed again, and forced Alabama to try the case on its merits, with the proviso that the Federal District court should try the case if Alabama refused to. It's just astounding looking back that such an order would be necessary.

Naturally, you can see where this is headed. The Alabama court found in favor of the state. The Alabama appeals court refused to hear the appeal. So, after 5 years, the USSC heard the appeal and found in favor of the NAACP, and this is what I found both most interesting and relevant to the present day. I'll just quote Wikipedia and let you take from it what you will:

In an opinion delivered by Justice John Marshall Harlan II, the Supreme Court decided in favor of the petitioners, holding that "Immunity from state scrutiny of petitioner's membership lists is here so related to the right of petitioner's members to pursue their lawful private interests privately and to associate freely with others in doing so as to come within the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment" and, further, that freedom to associate with organizations dedicated to the "advancement of beliefs and ideas" is an inseparable part of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Because the action of the state obtaining the names of the Association's membership would likely interfere with the free association of its members, the state's interest in obtaining the records was superseded by the constitutional rights of the petitioners.