Records of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia

These files are divided into four major categories: administrative, topical, case, and project.

Administrative files contain documents regarding the business and membership of the national and state organization, as well as some local chapters.

Topical files contain information about issues such as abortion, students' rights, reapportionment, and mental health. These were often interfiled with administrative papers.

The unrestricted case files contain either information -- correspondence, records, and briefs -- about cases the Virginia ACLU was handling, or what the office called "research case material," i.e., usually records and briefs of ACLU cases in other areas of the country.

Finally, the project files (similar to the topical files but more extensive) consist of organization, research, and publicity material regarding issues of long-term concern to the Virginia ACLU. Major projects for the period 1967-1979 focus on the rights of women, prisoners in Virginia's penitentiaries, and migrant farmworkers on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. A significant percentage of the prison project files are restricted, except for very limited types of research. For more information ask for the access information sheet for the restricted prison files.

The following table indicates the types of files in each accession, and the number of boxes in each which are open to research.



Acc. Number No. of boxes Year recieved Types of files and years covered

9690 10 1971 Administrative, primarily re national organization, 1967-69

9690-a 12 1973 Administrative, topical, and small number of case files, 1968-71

9690-b 4 1973 Administrative and topical files, 1969-73

9690-c 17 1975 Case, topical, prison and women's rights project, and administrative files, 1968-74

9690-d 2 1976 Topical and a few case files, 1969-73

9690-e 4 1976 Administrative, topical and prison project files, 1969-73

9690-f 2 1977 Administrative and case files, 1954-74

9690-g 17 1979 Administrative and topical files, 1965-77

9690-h 12 1981 Administrative, case and migrant workers' project files, 1974-79



Use of finding aid This finding aid is comprised of a container list, an index of selected subjects, and an index of cases. The container list provides box number, dates, and content description for every folder in each accession of files, in the order in which they were originally processed. The subject index is based upon the topical folder headings; since only about half of the case folder headings have descriptors, the cases were not included in the subject index. The subject and case indexes will provide the easiest and quickest access to the issues found in these papers. The administrative files are not indexed, however, and in addition to containing detailed information about the administration of the ACLU at the local, state, and national levels, some of these files are also concerned with issues and cases. Consequently, a careful reading of the container list is recommended for a thorough sense of the scope of the collection.