Bruce Springsteen Honored by ACLU for Civil-Rights Advocacy

On July 24, the rock legend Bruce Springstein, 76, received the newly created Ralph Ellison Award for Defenders of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the ACLU’s Biennial Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C. The two-and-a-half-hour ceremony gathered roughly 1,200 attendees, most of them high-school participants from the National Advocacy Institute, in the Washington Hilton ballroom.

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Springstein performed “Streets of Minneapolis,” a protest ballad he wrote in January after the fatal shootings of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers. Earlier in the year, the artist licensed his 1984 anthem “Born in the USA” for an ACLU ad campaign that highlighted the Supreme Court’s decision in the birthright-citizenship case Trump v. Barbara, in which the Court rejected President Donald Trump’s executive order to end automatic citizenship for children born to undocumented or temporary-visa parents.

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Springstein was one of five honorees. Former NFL quarterback and activist Colin Kaepernick received the same award and urged the audience to “rewrite history.” Other recipients included Vanita Gupta, former U.S. associate attorney and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley Law; and Elizabeth Foster, a South Carolina advocate for the freedom to read.

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• “I never really considered myself much of an activist,” — Caption See Bruce Springsteen

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• “I will accept this award tonight for the folks who really deserve it. You know, as the citizens from all walks of life in Minnesota, Portland, Portland in Los Angeles and New York. Our other under-siege cities who this year put their beliefs and their lives on the line in defense of the rights of their neighbors and in service of our American ideas,” — Caption See Bruce Springsteen

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