National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee
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In 1951 the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee was formed to defend political activists (some Communists, some not) whom the ACLU and other civil rights groups refused to defend or did not defend when they were brought up before the House Un-American Activities Committee. At that time, the ACLU was cooperating with the FBI. They shared information on ACLU members and any members suspected of being communist sympathizers were purged from the organization.
After the McCarthy era, the organization continued to defend civil rights and won a number of high profile cases. In the case of Peck v. State of Alabama and the FBI, NECLC sued the FBI for damages on behalf of James Peck, a young Freedom Rider who had been beaten into unconsciousness by the Ku Klux Klan in Birmingham, Alabama in 1961. In an unprecedented decision, the court ruled against the FBI that the government has the common law duty to protect citizens when it has notice of impending violence.
The organization won another landmark case in 1974 in Farmworkers v. A&P, when it defended the United Farm Workers' right to boycott The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company for selling non-union grapes and lettuce.
