1888-1976
Attorney and Political Activist

A Champion of Individual Rights.

An active member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Morris L. Ernst spent his legal career fighting for the rights of people outside the mainstream of American society.

Background.

Born to Jewish parents in the rural Alabama town of Uniontown, Morris Leopold Ernst experienced firsthand the consequences of being a social outsider. After graduating from New York Law School in 1912, he spent most of the next six decades with the New York City law firm of Greenbaum, Wolff, and Ernst.

Defending the "Outsider."

During the 1920s Ernst provided legal counsel to many of the political radicals detained in the "Palmer Raids" during the Red Scare of 1920, and he was a frequent legal adviser to the NAACP, becoming a member of its...