In the 1950s, the state of Alabama considered the NAACP to be subversive. The state demanded a list of the NAACP’s members.
In court, the government argued that the NAACP was an organization filled with radicals and agitators and thus a danger to a lawful state. The NAACP argued that government officials wanted to publicize the list and distribute it to law enforcement so discourage citizens from exercising their First Amendment rights.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in NAACP vs. Alabama in 1958 was a landmark of civil rights law.
In 1993, the Texas Human Rights Commission demanded a list of the members of the Ku Klux Klan. Michael Lowe, the grand dragon, appealed to the American Civil Liberties Union. Anthony Griffin, a young lawyer who was winning civil liberties cases, got the brief.
Griffin is African American. He was also legal counsel for the Texas NAACP.
When word got out that Griffin was representing the Klan, the Texas NAACP fired him.
Newspaper people sometimes get into closed-door meetings, and I heard Griffin explain to the board members of the Texas NAACP that he was standing on principle. If the government could take away the First Amendment rights of Klan members today, the government could come for the rights of NAACP members tomorrow, he said. Rights belong to all, not just to the people you like. That’s what makes a right a right — it applies to all.
My story for The Galveston County Daily News was picked up by the Associated Press. Griffin’s stand was news in Texas, and it was news in New York, where Nat Hentoff, a columnist for The Village Voice, was interested.
Hentoff’s account of this story is Chapter 2 in his Living the Bill of Rights: How to Be an Authentic American. Hentoff dedicated his book to Griffin.
Note the subtitle of Hentoff’s book. If you are discouraged by politics today, it might be time for a refresher course on what authentic Americans look like. They stand for the rights of all when the reins of government have fallen into bad hands.
• Source: Nat Hentoff, Living the Bill of Rights: How to Be an Authentic American; New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1998.
Anthony Griffin’s new book is also highly recommended. See “Anthony Griffin: ‘The Water Cries,’” March 13, 2025.
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