Morris Ernst

Morris Leopold Ernst (August 23, 1888 – May 21, 1976) was an American lawyer and prominent attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In public life, he defended and asserted the rights of Americans to privacy and freedom from censorship, playing a significant role in challenging and overcoming the banning of certain works of literature (including James Joyce's Ulysses and Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness) and in asserting the right of media employees to organize labor unions. He also promoted an anti-communist stance within the ACLU itself, and was a member of the President's Committee on Civil Rights. Background Morris Leopold Ernst was born in Uniontown, Alabama, on August 23, 1888, into a Jewish family. His father, Carl Ernst, had been born in Plzeň, Bohemia (in what is now the Czech Republic), and had worked as a peddler and shopkeeper; while his mother, Sarah Bernheim, was the daughter of German immigrants and had graduated from Hunter College. The family moved to New York when Morris was two, and lived in several locations in Manhattan where Carl ran a general store. Morris attended the Horace Mann School and graduated from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, in 1909. He studied law at night at New York Law School where he graduated in 1912 and was admitted to the New York bar in 1913. Career