In celebration of the 90th anniversary of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Maine Civil Liberties Union will host a traveling exhibition that highlights the work of the organization over the last 90 years.
In addition to Maine, the ACLU’s traveling exhibit will be on display in Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Iowa, New Jersey, Tennessee, Oklahoma, California, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Texas and Utah, as well as Washington, D.C.
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In Maine, the show will be on view all day today and Monday at the ground floor reception area of the Portland International Jetport in South Portland; from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Abromson Community Center mezzanine at the University of Southern Maine in Portland; and all day Wednesday through Friday at the Woodbury Campus Center at USM in Portland.
“We have made great civil liberties progress in the last 90 years, expanding the rights of free speech, due process and equal protection under the law,” Shenna Bellows, executive director of the MCLU, said in a press release.
The exhibition provides an historical overview of the ACLU’s achievements since its founding in 1920. The organization was established in response to raids by the Department of Justice, led by U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, during which citizens were rounded up because of their political views.
The exhibition includes stories of people the ACLU has represented, including John Scopes, a teacher accused of violating a Tennessee state law against the teaching of evolution in the 1920s; Ozzie Powell, one of the “Scottsboro Boys” sentenced to death in Alabama in the 1930s for allegedly raping a white woman, a crime he did not commit; Mildred and Richard Loving, a Virginia interracial couple charged in the 1960s with violating the state’s “Racial Integrity Act”; and in the 21st Century, Diane Schroer, an Army veteran whose job offer at the Library of Congress was rescinded when it learned Schroer was in the process of changing gender.
The ACLU has evolved into an organization with more than 500,000 members and hundreds of attorneys.
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