This study was prepared by the Commission on Law and Social Action, SHAD POLIER, chairman; LEO PFEFFER, director.

Acknowledgment is made to JOSEPH B. ROBISON, BENJAMIN MINTZ, and SPENCER RICH of the Commission staff for the research and writing of the study.

A publication of the Department of Public Affairs, WILL MASLOW, director.

FOREWORD

ALL AMERICANS are in debt to the American Jewish Congress for the study of the "Assault upon Freedom of Association" for which I am happy to write this foreword.

In view of the great social tension, particularly in the Southern states, arising out of the Supreme Court decision ordering the desegregation of the public schools, we perhaps cannot expect universal agreement as to how quickly this decision can and should be made effective. But all Americans should be concerned with the actions being taken to liquidate the NAACP in a number of Southern states. These "legal" attempts to make it impossible for Negroes and others to associate freely to secure their rights under the law of our land are a threat to the liberties of all Americans of all races.

No one who knows the facts can blame the NAACP for the racial problems in our country or think of this organization as made up of extremists of one sort to be set opposite the extremists on the other side who make up the White Citizens Councils and the Ku Klux Klan. It is clear to anyone who is willing to read the record that the NAACP is a legitimate association which by legal means is attempting to win for colored peoples the rights which they deserve as citizens.

Certainly, too, everyone who reads this study must realize that these assaults upon the NAACP are of deep and immediate concern to all who cherish the right of freedom of association upon which our democratic society depends.

EUGENE CARSON BLAKE, President, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America

INTRODUCTION

M

ORE THAN 100 YEARS AGO, AN ACUTE VISITOR TO OUR shores, Alexis de Tocqueville, observed that "the most democratic country on the face of the earth is that in which men have in our time carried to the highest perfection the art of pursuing in common the object of their common desires, and have applied this new science to the greatest number of purposes. . . . If men living in democratic countries had no right and no inclination to associate for political purposes, their independence would be in great jeopardy". (De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Galaxy Edition, pp. 319-320).

Since de Tocqueville's time, our country has grown and its society has become ever more complex. Our democracy has survived and grown with our country largely because we have kept and used our freedom of association.

That freedom is under severe attack today in some of the Southern states. Since the historic decision of the United States Supreme Court in May 1954, condemning racial segregation in public schools, a number of state governments have invoked a multiplicity of devices to defeat or delay effectuation of the Court's decision.

The unhappy story of those efforts to annul the constitutional guarantee of equality has been widely told. Less attention has been given, however, to an ominous shift in the nature of the attack to a widespread assault upon the constitutional right to freedom of association, on which all of our liberties depend. That assault is motivated by the fact that the struggle against racial segregation has largely been organized and made effective by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Today, with the ever-expanding scope of governmental activities and the complexity of modern social life, voluntary associations have become an indispensable part of the struggle to preserve

40361 - 59 - pt. 3-7

democracy against totalitarianism. Under a totalitarian government there is but one association-the state; in a democracy there are a multitude of associations. Thus, churches and synagogues are free associations of persons joining together for worship. Trade unions are associations of persons joining together for industrial advancement. Universities are associations for educational and intellectual advancement. The Elks, the Kiwanis and the Lions are associations for social and fraternal purposes. The Republican Party and the Democratic Party are associations for political purposes. The American Jewish Congress is an association of American Jews freely joining together to defend Jewish rights and promote democracy. And the NAACP is an association of Americans freely joining together to eliminate racial discrimination and segregation, which impair the rights of Negroes as citizens of the United States.

The fathers of our Bill of Rights recognized that free association of individuals for common purposes is indispensable to democratic living. Accordingly, they included in the First Amendment-the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights-a guaranty of freedom of assembly, a term universally recognized today as encompassing freedom of association.

It is the violation of this freedom that now concerns us. That concern is not affected by whether we agree or disagree with the Supreme Court's decision on desegregation, whether we favor or oppose racial integration, whether we believe desegregation should be brought about immediately or gradually, by legal action or by the educational process. The liberties of all Americans, whatever may be their views on these questions, are threatened by the widespread assault upon their specific right to associate through the NAACP.

In the following pages we recount the details of that assault. The record reveals that practically every instrumentality of law and government in the South has been used to persecute and oppress the NAACP and the citizens who constitute its membership. In the words of the late Justice Murphy speaking of another unpopular association, Jehovah's Witnesses, its members "have been harassed at every turn by the resurrection and enforcement of little used ordinances and statutes." Legal processes and procedures have been used and abused to frustrate its legitimate activities. Trumped up charges have been levelled against it. It has been compelled to expose its membership lists