Arthur Garfield Hays Papers

Consists of correspondence, case files, speeches, articles, books, news clippings, and photographs which document Hays's career as a New York City lawyer and general counsel for the ACLU beginning in 1920. Case files comprise the single largest series of this collection and include correspondence, court papers, legal briefs, and other items related to particular court cases in which Hays was a participant. The bulk of this material concerns the numerous legal motions filed in many high-profile cases involving Hays, such as labor disputes in the coal mining districts of Pennsylvania and West Virginia (1922-1935), including the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1922; right to strike cases taken against Jersey City, NJ, mayor Frank “Boss” Hague; John Strachey's deportation case; the Emerson Jennings vs. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania conspiracy case; the Jehovah's Witnesses and the right not to salute the American flag; the case of Stanley E. Faithful vs. the DAILY MIRROR and other newspapers on charges of libel conerning the circumstances of his daughter's death (much of the material collected by Hays's brother Alan); and cases relating to communism and sedition in the 1940s.