When did the Supreme Court begin to strongly protect the right to free speech and a free press?

0:00[MUSIC] Even though the First Amendment to our Constitution has protected free speech in principle since it was adopted in 1791. For most of our history, free speech did not exist as an actual lived reality. That's why the organization that I was proud to head for many years, the ACLU was founded more than 100 years ago at the time of World War I, because at that period. 15,000 people were imprisoned merely for peacefully expressing opposition to the war or to the draft. It wasn't until the 1920s, that the Supreme Court for the first time struck down under the First Amendment state laws and local laws that violated free speech. It wasn't until 1965 that the Supreme Court first strucked down a federal statute as violating the First Amendment, even though we know that the infamous alien in sedition acts, which went all the way back to 1798,

1:11making criticism of the president and other government officials a crime surely violates free speech principles, but it was a legal standard that simply was not honored in reality. Until we had organizations like the ACLU and NAACP and others that were formed and courageous individuals who exercised their free speech rights, risked punishment, faced punishment and took their cases to court where the Supreme Court began to put teeth, real teeth, real meaning into the law in the 20th century, and pretty much culminating in the second half of the 20th century. So the big lesson for everybody who's watching this is freedom of speech really depends not only on the brilliant framers and ratifiers of the First Amendment, but on every single one of you, every single one of us, to make sure that government officials are actually aware of our free speech rights and are protecting them and that you can complain and do something about it if they should fail to do so.