On behalf of the staff and board of the ACLU of Oregon, we offer our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Allan. He was an inspiration to many in the ACLU organization and throughout the Portland community. We will continue our efforts to preserve the legacy he created as one of the founders of the ACLU of Oregon in 1955. We greatly appreciate the bequest Allan provided to the ACLU Foundation of Oregon in his will, and the many gifts we have received in remembrance of Allan and Ruth Hart.
This is what he said:
"Many comfortable Americans are ignorant of and even hostile toward civil liberties because they have taken them for granted for so long."
Thus spoke Allan Hart on Bill of Rights Day in 1967 when the ACLU of Oregon conferred upon him its highest honor, the E. B. MacNaughton Award. It was given "in recognition of eminent contributions to ensure the preservation of civil liberties and the advancement of human rights." Lofty words, but they could not have been said of a more worthy person.
Allan Hart played a prominent role in the formation and organization of the Oregon affiliate of the ACLU in 1955. For 6 years prior to that time, Allan Hart was the ACLU of Oregon. In 1949, when his friend Gus J. Solomon was appointed a federal judge, Allan succeeded him as Oregon correspondent of the ACLU.
Allan presided at the first meeting of the ACLU of Oregon executive board in November 1955 and served on the board of directors until 1967. In 1986, in his late seventies, he consented to run and was once again elected to the board.
Allan Hart was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1909. The family moved to Portland, Oregon in 1911. He graduated from Stanford University (1931) and Yale Law School (1934). After a teaching stint at Yale Law School, he returned to Portland to enter private practice. In 1936 he was appointed Assistant U.S. Attorney in Portland. And in 1938 and 1939, he served as special assistant to Thurmond Arnold in the Anti-Trust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. He returned to Portland in 1939 as General Counsel of the Bonneville Power Administration. From 1942 to 1946, he served as an army officer in the South Pacific. After the war, he returned to Portland and private practice.
Allan had been an ACLU member for more than 65 years, from 1937 until his death on February 2, 2002. He had been an active member of the Portland City Club since 1936 and was its president in 1966-67. He was chairman of the City Club committee whose investigations and 1948 report (subsequently cited by his friend William O. Douglas in a U.S. Supreme Court decision) drew public attention to the deplorable conditions at the Portland jail. As president of the Oregon Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild in 1938, he was largely responsible for that body’s Civil Liberties Committee report which did much to demolish the infamous witch-hunting Red Squad of the Portland Police department.
In 1949, in Namba v. McCourt before the Oregon Supreme Court, Allan Hart successfully argued to have declared unconstitutional Oregon’s statutes prohibiting "aliens," most notably Japanese immigrants, from owning land.
During his 6-year term on the Oregon State Board of Higher Education (1958-64), Allan worked tirelessly for adoption of the policy which forbids fraternities and sororities at state institutions of higher education from discriminating on the basis of race or religion.
Allan Hart had a long love affair with the Bill of Rights. Civil liberties in Oregon will always be in his debt.