Page 18 - Historical Dictionary of Political Communication in the United States

ARMSTRONG,
LIBERTIES
CIVIL
AMERICAN BESS FURMAN UNION (ACLU). A group whose primary 7
goal is to protect constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, especially freedom of
expression. Founded in 1920, ACLU has a quarter of a million members. It has
had considerable impact on political communication through supporting court
tests of laws that promote censorship or restrict speech. It gained early fame
through the Scopes ' 'Monkey'' trial, which tested the constitutionality of a Ten-
nessee law that forbade teaching Darwin's theory of evolution.
SOURCES: Allan J. Cigler and Burdett A. Loomis, Interest Group Politics, fourth edi-
tion, 1995; Leon Hurwitz, Historical Dictionary of Censorship in the U.S., 1995.
Jacqueline Nash Gifford

AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR-CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL
ORGANIZATIONS (AFL-CIO) is the collective group of organizations that
work to protect the rights of labor. The AFL-CIO represents 13 million workers.
Union locals retain their individual identities and manage their own business.
However, when issues arise affecting rights of unions and their members, the
national organization takes charge. The AFL-CIO is a major lobbying force and
also a major political action group that contributes millions of dollars in presi-
dential and congressional election campaigns.
SOURCES: Jay M. Shafritz, The HarperCollins Dictionary of American Government
and Politics, 1992; Kathleen Thompson Hill and Gerald N. Hill, Real Life Dictionary of
American Politics, 1994.
Jacqueline Nash Gifford

ANDERSON, JACK (1922- ) is considered one of America's muckrakers. He
has been covering Washington since 1947 as a newspaper and magazine col-
umnist. While attending the University of Utah, Anderson became a reporter for
the Salt Lake City Tribune. One of his earliest investigative reports—an expose
on Mormon polygamy—got him in trouble, and he left school to become a
missionary. He then became a reporter for the Deseret News. He was drafted
into the army during World War II and was assigned to Stars and Stripes.
After the war, he went to Washington to write for columnist Drew Pearson,
who wrote a syndicated column called "Washington Merry-Go-Round." An-
derson took over that column when Pearson died in 1969. In 1954, he became
Washington correspondent for the Sunday supplement Parade.
Anderson received the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for his reporting on the Security
Action Group papers that showed the Nixon administration's favoritism of Pak-
istan in a war between that country and India.

SOURCE: Neil A. Grauer, Wits and Sages, 1984.
Jacqueline Nash Gifford

ARMSTRONG, BESS FURMAN (1894-1969), a member of the women's
press corps who covered Eleanor Roosevelt, was introduced to newspapering