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• 1 2017-04-23T21:32:30-07:00 Civil Liberties Open Forum—March 25th, 1969 15 to be included in the campus climate section plain 2017-04-30T18:47:29-07:00

  The following is a short article from The Trail (University of Puget Sound's campus newspaper) that advertises an open forum held by the ACLU on the University of Puget Sound campus [A&SC 37]. Further commentary is included after the article.

  The Tacoma, WA chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had a campus presence at the University of Puget Sound that became prominent in the 1960s. The basic civil liberties of the American citizen were of great concern in the 1960s, and as the Civil Rights movement marched forward across the nation, it was increasingly a topic of conversation among students, faculty, and community members alike. What were the rights of Americans? Were they truly the same rights for everyone? And if not, what could we do to ensure our country was truly free and equal? These were all salient questions in the late 1960s, and among the school of thought that lead to the development of the Now, Mr. Lincoln? campaign [A&SC 37]. After all, the offering of some financial freedoms was surely to lead to other freedoms- or this was the idea.

  On March 21, 1969, The Trail published an article advertising that the ACLU (misspelled as the ACTU in the article’s headline) would be hosting a forum about people’s civil liberties. This was largely focused on what people were guaranteed in America under the Law and the Constitution, and, as the article states, the discussion was intended to include the following:

  “...freedom of speech, assembly, religion, due process, fair trial, as well as academic freedom and the concept of equality” [A&SC 37].

  While this forum did not directly cover the Now, Mr. Lincoln? campaign or issues of race (or, at the least, made no attempt to advertise that it would do such) it came during a time when the University of Puget Sound campus, and indeed the greater Tacoma community, was very concerned with what their legal rights were. This was a time of political and social upheaval in many ways, for people of all races. The Now, Mr. Lincoln? campaign was in its own way a response to questions about legal rights, as discussed above, and this included race. Note that the article also does mention a discussion of equality in the ACLU forum- appropriately, equality was one of the topics of the day [A&SC 37]. Not much has changed since then.

  The forum took place on March 25th, 1969, as scheduled. There appears to have been no official report made about its outcome.