Misplaced Pages

#798201

14-641: The Free Speech League's main advocates included Edward Bliss Foote , his son Edward Bond Foote, Emma Goldman , and Theodore Schroeder . Other free speech advocates of the era included Ezra Heywood , Ben Reitman , Moses Harman , and D. M. Bennett . The League was formed in 1902. Two other members involved in the League's creation were Bob Robins and Lucy Robins Lang . In 1908, its goals were reported as "freedom of peaceable assembly, of discussion and of propaganda; an uncensored press, telegraph and telephone; an uninspected express; an inviolable mail." To achieve its goals,

28-532: The American Civil Liberties Union . Edward Bliss Foote Edward Bliss Foote (February 20, 1829 – October 5, 1906) was an American medical doctor, writer, and advocate for birth control . Edward Bliss Foote was born in Cleveland on February 20, 1829. In 1858, he published Medical Common Sense , which contained frank discussion of sexual health for the general public. He

42-531: The Victorian-era campaign also attacked contraception , which was viewed as an immoral practice that promoted prostitution and venereal disease . A leader of the purity movement was Anthony Comstock , a postal inspector who successfully lobbied for the passage of the 1873 Comstock Act , a federal law prohibiting mailing of any material deemed to be obscene or related to sex in any way. Many states also passed similar state laws, which were collectively known as

56-482: The "Comstock Laws" and sometimes extended the federal law by outlawing the use and the distribution of contraceptives. Comstock was proud of being personally responsible for thousands of arrests and the destruction of hundreds of tons of books and pamphlets. When a British anarchist, John Turner , was arrested under the Anarchist Exclusion Act and threatened with deportation, Emma Goldman joined forces with

70-901: The 19th-century free speech and women's rights advocate Ida C. Craddock . Schroeder entered the University of Wisconsin in 1882 to study engineering and earned a law degree in 1889. Schroeder practiced law for ten years in Salt Lake City , Utah, working for statehood for Utah. In 1900, Schroeder moved to New York. In 1902, he formed the Free Speech League , a precursor to the American Civil Liberties Union , with Lincoln Steffens and others. Schroeder helped defend his anarchist friend Emma Goldman at her Denver trial. In 1904, Schroeder retired from practicing law and began writing. In his later years, he lived in Greenwich, Connecticut . At

84-665: The Free Speech League to champion his cause. The League enlisted the aid of Clarence Darrow and Edgar Lee Masters , who took Turner's case to the US Supreme Court . Although Turner and the League lost, Goldman considered the Casablanca to be a victory of propaganda . She had returned to anarchist activism, but it was taking its toll on her. "I never felt so weighed down," she wrote to Berkman. "I fear I am forever doomed to remain public property and to have my life worn out through

98-561: The League worked through the press, public speaking and the courts and felt that "the education of brains and quickening of consciences are first in order of time and effect." Its Secretary at the time was A. C. Pleydell of 175 Broadway in New York City . The League was officially incorporated on April 7, 1911, in Albany, New York . Its charter included the goal "by all lawful means to oppose every form of government censorship over any method for

112-489: The care for the lives of others." Margaret Sanger supported the cause of free speech throughout her career with a zeal comparable to her support for birth control . Sanger had grown up in a home in which the agnostic and iconoclastic orator Robert Ingersoll was admired. During the early years of her activism, Sanger viewed birth control primarily as a free speech issue, rather than a feminist issue, and when she started publishing The Woman Rebel in 1914, she did so with

126-503: The express goal of provoking a legal challenge to the Comstock Laws banning dissemination of information about contraception. In New York State , Emma Goldman introduced Sanger to members of the Free Speech League, such as Edward Bliss Foote and Theodore Schroeder , and the League later provided funding and advice to help Sanger with her legal battles. Around 1917 to 1919, the League gradually disbanded. Many of its members later joined

140-608: The expression, communication or transmission of ideas... and to promote such legislative enactments and constitutional amendments, state and national, as will secure these ends." One of the primary targets of the League was the Comstock Laws . After the American Civil War , a social purity movement grew in strength and wasbaimed at outlawing vice in general and prostitution and obscenity in particular. Composed primarily of Protestant moral reformers and middle-class women,

154-498: The state of freedom of speech in the United States by claiming that the US government may be a tyranny and that Americans view their liberties in a way that makes them hypocrites. Schroeder was a freelance psychoanalyst who studied the sexual basis of all religious experience. His interest in free speech, as well as his psychosexual theories, led him to study the controversial life of

SECTION 10

#1732855850799

168-516: The subject of a lawsuit after his death. In his will, Schroeder left his estate to two friends with the instruction for the money from the estate to be used to gather his voluminous writings and publish them. Two of Schroeder's cousins contested the will and successfully voided it. When upholding a lower court's decision, Judge O'Sullivan of the Connecticut Supreme Court stated in a unanimous three-judge opinion: The law will not declare

182-837: The time of Schroeder's death, his friend Lesley Kuhn was preparing for publication another book consisting of reprints of articles written by Schroeder, which were mainly anti-Mormon in nature. The headings of the articles were "Incest in Mormonism," "Polygamy in Congress," "Polygamy and the Constitution," "Polygamy and Inspired Lies," "The Sex-Determinant in Mormon Theology," "Mormonism and Prostitution," "Proxies in Mormon Polygamy," "Was Joseph Smith, 'The Prophet,' an Abortionist?," "Sadism in Mormonism," and "Sanctified Lust." His writings became

196-534: Was subsequently convicted under the Comstock Act and forced to remove information about birth control from the book. He was a co-founder of the Free Speech League . He died in Larchmont, New York on October 5, 1906. Theodore Schroeder Albert Theodore Schroeder (September 17, 1864 – February 10, 1953) was an American author who wrote on issues pertaining to freedom of expression. Schroeder challenged

#798201