Elected to ACLU of Hawaii Board of Directors

The May 8, 1970 Honolulu Advertiser announced that Lauren Ekroth was among eleven new directors elected to the board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii. The new officers and directors were to be installed at the organization’s annual dinner meeting on May 18 at the Pagoda Hotel, where the featured speaker was Philip J. Hirschkop — a Virginia attorney who had represented H. Rap Brown and the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, and a member of the national ACLU board.

The arc from Bachman Hall to the ACLU board was two years and direct: arrested in May 1968 for the principle of academic due process, Ekroth was now a director of the organization dedicated to defending civil liberties in Hawaii. The activist who had been a participant in 1968, then a committee chairman in 1969, was now serving in formal institutional leadership.

Several fellow new directors were already part of Ekroth’s community. Ann Boesgaard was a UH colleague who would be listed alongside him on the “Peace in Indochina” petition just one week later. Rene Tillich and Allen Trubitt would also sign that same petition. George Chaplin, also a new director, was the longtime editor of the Honolulu Advertiser. The article identified Ekroth simply as “Lauren Ekroth” — no title, no credential — among citizens, not a professor.