World War I and Civil Liberties

• Wartime Restriction of Civil Liberties• Espionage and Sedition Acts• The free speech cases

• Cultural censorship• Anti-German sentiments• Jane Addams

1919• Suffrage• Prohibition• Race riots• Strike wave

• Red Scare• Fear of Bolshevism• The Palmer Raids

World War I > Wartime Restriction of Civil Liberties in US History

• 1798: Alien and Sedition Acts

• Civil War: Suspension of Habeas Corpus

• 1917: The Espionage Act

• 1919-1920: The Red Scare

World War I > Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, anarchists censored to two years in penitentiary and fined $10,000 each for opposing

the draft, July 9, 1917

World War I > Eugene Debs was jailed again under the Espionage Act in 1918

World War I > Cartoon against the Sedition Act, 1920

World War I > Supreme Court Free Speech Cases

• Charles Schenk v. United States (1919)• convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917• distributed antiwar pamphlets• conviction upheld• Oliver Wendell Holmes: “man shouting in a crowded theater,” “clear and present danger”

• Jacob Abrams v. United States (1919)• convicted under the Espionage Act• distributed pamphlets and agitated against the war• conviction upheld • Holmes dissented: “the defendants were deprived of their rights under the constitution of the United States”

• Benjamin Gitlow v New York (1925)• convicted under the New York Criminal Anarchy Law of 1902• called for the overthrow of U.S. government• the Court upheld the state law but extended the reach of the First amendment• Holmes dissented: “government must show the clear and immediate danger.”

World War I > The Poster by the Committee on Public Information

World War I > Some names changed because of the war with Germany

• Hamburger - “liberty stake”

• Sauerkraut - “liberty cabbage”

• German measles - “liberty measles”

• dashchunds - “liberty pups”

• Berlin, Iowa - Lincoln, Iowa

• Kaiser Street - Maine Way

World War I > Cartoon making fun of Jane Addams, 1918

Suffrage > Men at the National Anti-Suffrage Association Headquaters

Suffrage > The National Women’s Party pickets the White House in January 1917

Suffrage > Women’s Suffrage Cartoon

Prohibition > Prohibition Cartoon, San Francisco Chronicle, May 1919

Prohibition > Cartoon Announcing the End of Crime Due to Prohibition, 1919

Race Riots > Police “Rescues” a Black Man During the Chicago Race Riot

Strike Wave > The Seattle General Strike

Strike Wave > Steel Workers Announce the Walk-Out, October 4, 1919

Strike Wave > US Steel Corporation Poster Proclaims Victory

Strike Wave > Strike Ballot in Several European Languages, 1919

Strike Wave > New York World Cartoon about the Railroad Strike, April 1919

Red Scare > Philadelphia Inquirer cartoon against Bolshevism, 1919

Red Scare > Literary Digest on the Bombing of Palmer’s Home, June 1919

Red Scare > Police searches suspects in Palmer raids

Red Scare > Chicago Tribune Cartoon on Foreign Radicals, June 1919

Red Scare > Spider-web chart linking women’s rights groups to radicalism, 1922

Red Scare > Debs and Palmer on Radicalism

Eugene Debs, 1918:“I believe in the Constitution. Isn’t it strange that we Socialists stand almost alone today in upholding and defending the Constitution of the United States? The revolutionary fathers … understood that free speech, a free and the right of free assemblage by the people were fundamental principles in democratic government. … I believe in the right of free speech, in war as well as peace.”

Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, 1920:“Like a prairie-fire, the blaze of revolution was sweeping over every American institution of law and order a year ago. It was eating its way into the homes of the American workmen, its sharp tongues of revolutionary heat were licking the altars of the churches, leaping into the belfry of the school bell, crawling into the sacred corners of American homes, seeking to replace marriage vows with libertine laws, burning up the foundations of society. …

My information showed that communism in this country was an organization of thousands of aliens who were direct allies of Trotzky. Aliens of the same misshapen caste of mind and indecencies of character, and it showed that they were making the same glittering promises of lawlessness, of criminal autocracy to Americans, that they had made to the Russian peasants.”