Roger Nash Baldwin Quotes
I would say that social work began in my mind in the Unitarian Church when I was ten or twelve years old, and I started to do things that I thought would help other people.
Baldwin, Roger Nash. The Reminiscences of Roger Nash Baldwin. Oral History Research Office, Columbia University, 1954.
She and many of the other white activists were called “do-gooders” by the Southern authorities of communities which were integration demonstration targets. The term was derogatory in the South, but Mrs. Peabody and others were proud of the term as that was exactly their purpose—to do good. Mrs. Peabody, and the wives of a number of wives of Christian Bishops, black and white, went to a restaurant in St. Augustine and requested service which was contrary to the segregation laws of Florida at the time. The women were arrested. The act of civil disobedience in integrating the restaurant was one act of a planned desegregation strategy worked out with Martin Luther King’s SCLC organization. The mature age of the women and their prominent husbands brought a great deal of newspaper coverage which is just what the demonstrators wanted. The photo is of Mrs. Peabody getting arrested. See {637404} and {637405} for more on this incident.
Roger Nash Baldwin was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He served as executive director of the ACLU until 1950.
