MCLU Celebrates 40th Anniversary

Honors 22 MCLU Board Presidents

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PORTLAND – The Maine Civil Liberties Union will celebrate its fortieth anniversary at a dinner on May 8 in Freeport.

The year of its founding, 1968, was one of the most traumatic of the post-World War II era, with the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy, a growing youth rebellion and street-level protest against the Vietnam War.  The issues that drove that turbulent year also spawned the MCLU, which had its first official meeting in February, 1968.  Maine was one of only three states that did not have an ACLU affiliate at that time.

“It was an amazing time– we were up to our neck defending student and teacher Vietnam war protesters, those seeking conscious objector status, and those who wanted nothing more than to wear their hair long, wear granny glasses, or read Catcher in the Rye,” said Orland Delogu, a founder who served on the ACLU National Board and who served as the second President of the MCLU from 1969 to 1971.  Delogu was one of several founders and early MCLU volunteers who were law professors associated with the University of Maine School of Law.

The centerpiece of the year-long anniversary celebration will be a special event on May 8, the Scolnik dinner, which will honor all the past MCLU board presidents. The annual dinner is named in honor of former Maine Supreme Court Justice Louis Scolnik, who was one of the MCLU founders and its first board president.

“Without the work of these board presidents, the MCLU would not have survived,” said Shenna Bellows, MCLU Executive Director. “From Vietnam to the Iraq War, the MCLU has defended the rights of Mainers to free speech, privacy, due process and equal protection under the law.”

The MCLU’s first case involved the rights of criminal defendants to have access to counsel.  Its second case defended the rights of Job Corps workers who were fired after participating in a protest in Lewiston.  Criminal justice and free speech cases continued to dominate the MCLU docket for the next forty years.  One of the most notable book-banning cases occurred in the 1970s in Baileyville, when the school board banned the memoir of a doctor who had served in Vietnam on the grounds that it contained foul language.

Over its history, the MCLU had special projects dedicated to Veterans’ Rights, Privacy, Prisoners’ Rights, and Workplace Equity.  The MCLU was instrumental in founding the Maine Choice Coalition to work for women’s reproductive rights.  The MCLU was a leader in a number of referendum fights from issues of censorship and pornography to reproductive choice to rights for gay and lesbian Mainers.

The Scolnik Special 40th Anniversary Dinner Celebration will be held on May 8 at 7 p.m. at the Harraseeket Inn in Freeport. Tickets are $85 and can be obtained by calling Edward Reilly at 774-5444.

Note to Editors: Prof. Delogu is available for interviews starting Monday, April 14.