This is one in a series of profiles marking the 60th anniversary of the ACLU of Kentucky’s founding.  Each week through December 2015 we will highlight the story of one member, client, case, board or staff member that has been an integral part of our organization’s rich history.

Bob Sachs

“I think as we grow and as we get bigger and bigger and have a larger and larger breadth, we have to maintain our closeness to the people around the state. . . . We speak for the disenfranchised a lot, we have to remember that.” -Bob Sachs

“It’s been an early attraction for me,” Bob Sachs said, explaining how he became interested in civil liberties work. When he was enrolled in the Northwestern University School of Law in the ’60s, Sachs co-founded a campus civil rights organization. “I think I’d always been involved with civil liberties,” he said.

Later, Sachs moved to Louisville and joined the Louisville chapter of the ACLU before it merged with the larger Kentucky chapter. Soon after the merger, he served a term as ACLU-KY president and then as a Kentucky representative on the national ACLU board.

Sachs, describing the shifts he noticed in the ACLU-KY’s makeup, said, “The big change over the years was the focus on reproductive freedom and LGBT rights. In my early years it was on the Bill of Rights kinds of things, very conservative [topics]. We broadened our scope and involved more women.”   Regardless, some issues came up again and again. “The prayer in school issue was always hot, from the very beginning,” Sachs said. “We thought we’d won that years and years ago, and it keeps popping up in different forms.” Although Sachs is an attorney, he limited his involvement with the ACLU-KY to serving on the board, and in 2005, he hosted the organization’s 50th anniversary celebration.

“I think people are not on that board for any reason other than their passion for civil liberties,” he said. “I know there are certain ego benefits to being on some boards, but I don’t see the ACLU as that kind of board. It’s people who believe in civil liberties and who try to maintain and secure them. To me, that sets the ACLU apart from any other organization.”