News & Commentary

Helen Marston, founder of the San Diego ACLU.

Here in San Diego and Imperial, the ACLU was founded in 1933 by Helen Marston, the daughter of prominent civic leaders George and Anna Marston. The “shy” and “unassuming” Wellesley graduate was nonetheless a fierce fighter. She served as plaintiff in a 1935 ACLU loyalty oath case, and began the affiliate’s immigrants’ rights work. She traveled to Imperial County six times in 1933-1934, defying vigilante violence to advocate for the rights of farm workers to assemble and organize.

Other early ACLU cases in San Diego include challenging the Alien Land Act that prohibited everyone except whites and African Americans from owning land in California; defending folk singer Pete Seeger, who was told he would have to sign a loyalty oath before he could play in a rented auditorium (1960); and litigating a school desegregation case in El Centro, in the only case in the decade after Brown v. Board of Education in which African-Americans and Latinos worked together (1955) on school desegregation.

San Diego ACLU 75-year timeline (1930s - 2008)

Border fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Photo by Bear Guerra.

SAN DIEGO – More than two years after a series of aggressive raids in which city workers seized and summarily destroyed the possessio