Introduction
The census provides a core resource for understanding social and economic change. To interpret the meaning of historical census data, it is important to understand the historical context in which it was produced. As Emigh et al. (Reference Emigh, Riley and Ahmed2016: 19–20) point out, “[t]he census is ultimately not a bureaucratic document, but an interactive achievement; censuses cannot produce knowledge if they do not elicit the willing or unwilling collaboration of millions of respondents.” Historians have shown that censuses are the product of both the historical actors who oversaw the process of collecting the data and the broader public, and that both reflect broader social and political forces (Anderson Reference Anderson2015; Emigh et al. Reference Emigh, Riley and Ahmed2016; Igo Reference Igo2018; Magnuson Reference Magnuson1995). Public resistance to census taking is affected by privacy concerns and attitudes towards the government.
The 1970 Census provides a case study to inform an understanding of public alarm about privacy and the census. In the late 1960s, individuals expressed their concerns through letters to Bureau staff, testimony at House Subcommittee hearings, and acts of civil disobedience. This article places the 1970 US census of population in the historical context of post-war “Big Brother” anxiety and uses primary source evidence to explicate the response of heightened concern for privacy by a subset of the American people.
Every decade since 1790, Americans have complained that the decennial census is an invasion of privacy. Since 1840, the Census Bureau has responded to such privacy concerns with promises of confidentiality. Ruggles and Magnuson (Reference Ruggles and Magnuson2023) argue that these promises have been ineffective because privacy and confidentiality are quite different. Privacy is an individual’s control over personal information, and confidentiality is a government promise to prevent public disclosure of personal information (cf. Singer et al. Reference Singer, Mathiowetz and Couper1993). Since the 1950s, the government has promised to keep personally identifiable information about an individual secret for 72 years after it was collected for the decennial census.Footnote 1
Our previous analysis used newspaper articles to assess public concerns about census privacy and reveal the responses of the Census Bureau (Ruggles and Magnuson Reference Ruggles and Magnuson2023). Figure 1 shows the number of newspaper articles about census privacy that appeared around each decennial census in four newspapers (digitally available from 1880–2020): LA Times, Minneapolis Star and Tribune, New York Times, and Washington Post. We identified three great waves of public concern about census privacy surrounding the decennial censuses of 1940, 1970, and 2000. In all three waves, we argue, most newspaper articles expressed concern about privacy, not concern about disclosure.
Newspaper articles discussing census privacy, by type of concern: LA Times, Minneapolis Star and Tribune, New York Times, Washington Post, 1870–2020.
This article focuses on the second wave of privacy concern, the public anxiety surrounding the 1970 census. We argue that concerns about personal privacy and government overreach were the main issue for some members of the public, politicians, and media around the time of the 1970 census. We further contend that the Census Bureau’s defense stressing confidentiality – keeping census information secret once collected – failed to address the main public concern and source of resistance to census inquiries.
In addition to analyzing newspaper reports and congressional testimony, we examine individual refusals to respond to the census by members of the public, the Census Bureau’s responses to such refusals, and the efforts of elected officials on behalf of their constituents to draw attention to the prying 1970 census. Newspapers document the facts of resistance to the census, but additional sources provide greater insight into the motives of the objectors.
Our analysis draws on the following types of primary source evidence: We exploit a collection of letters from Americans who complained about the government’s invasion of their privacy through the “snooping” 1970 census; Census Bureau letters responding to those concerns; statements by attendees at three days of hearings held by the House Subcommittee on Census and Statistics of the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service in 1969; and court cases reviewing individual refusals. We do not contend that any of these sources are representative of public opinion, but they do provide insight into the concerns and motivations of their authors.
Together, these materials strengthen our conclusion that government invasion of privacy was a significant concern, not government disclosure of personal information. For Americans in 1970, concern about the census invasion of privacy was a symptom of a larger distrust of the federal government more broadly. The response to government intrusion was resistance through letter writing and acts of civil disobedience.
The context of the 1970 census privacy anxiety
Deborah Nelson has argued that privacy was “reinvented” in the mid-1960s. Nelson pinpoints the Supreme Court’s decision in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) as decisive in “the sudden emergence of privacy as an object of intense anxiety, scrutiny, investigation, and exploration in the mid-1960s culture.” The Griswold v. Connecticut decision struck down Connecticut’s law prohibiting the use of birth control, thus giving privacy a constitutional guarantee. In Nelson’s (Reference Nelson2002: 3) view, “the heat of this debate over privacy shifted decisively in the early 1960s from the social and commercial to the political, that is, from tort conflicts between citizens where the state intervened to protect one from the other, to constitutional disputes between the citizen and the state, where the state itself acts as both intruder and protector.”
The second wave of anxiety about census privacy that emerged in the 1960s was stimulated by debate over the creation of a national data center. The Social Science Research Council’s Committee on the Preservation and Use of Economic Data recommended the creation of a central repository for federal data from a wide range of sources, focusing particularly on Census Bureau data. The mission of the Social Science Research Council was to mobilize policy-relevant social and behavioral science for the public good. To this end, a national data center was proposed to bring together data from disparate federal sources, making these data findable, accessible, and interoperable under strict disclosure protocols (Ruggles et al. Reference Ruggles, Miller, Kuh, Lebergott, Orcutt and Pechman1965). President Lyndon Johnson’s administration supported the national data center, but concerns raised by Congressman Cornelius Gallagher (D-NJ) in Congressional hearings before the Invasion of Privacy Subcommittee on behalf of “thousands of communications from Americans from all walks of life,” in combination with significant press reporting on his concerns, derailed the proposal (US Congress 1969a: 212; Kraus Reference Kraus2013). The Washington Post reported that witnesses at the hearings “assailed the plan” as a “threat to individual liberty” and a “harbinger of Big Brother, and a mechanized suffocation of the American dream” (Lardner Reference Lardner1966: A1).
The specter of “Big Brother” was not a wildly paranoid idea. Experts warned that “a computerized national data bank could become a monstrous ‘Big Brother’ with an insatiable appetite for snooping” (New York Times 1967: 36). In the Cold War era, the “all-seeing eye” was a “hallmark of totalitarianism” (Packard Reference Packard1967). Science fiction, too, played on the public’s fear of the computer with the “electronic brain” (Manning Reference Manning1964: 191). Evidence of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s abuses of power, within a federal agency known to maintain files on millions of Americans, was becoming widely known. The swirl of these perceived and real threats, combined with Nelson’s “reinvention” of privacy, helps to explain why Congressman Gallagher’s alarmist rhetoric and the publicity it produced ignited census anxiety in the mid-1960s.
The run-up to the 1970 census occurred amid a ferocious swirl of social, political, and cultural upheaval in American life. Civil rights activists Martin Luther King Jr. and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy were brutally assassinated in April and June of 1968, respectively. Democratic incumbent Lyndon Johnson did not run for reelection, and a fierce battle for the White House ended in a narrow victory for Republican Richard Nixon. Student movements across America challenged traditional structures of power and culture using non-violent marches, sit-ins, and picketing. The Moratorium to End the War – the largest antiwar demonstration in American history – took place just five months before the census. Many people assumed that the government was spying on antiwar dissidents, and they were correct – it was later revealed that the CIA had created intelligence files on at least 10,000 antiwar activists in this period (Hersh Reference Hersh1974).Footnote 2 It should not be surprising that some Americans assumed that information they provided to the census could wind up in a CIA dossier.
1970 census pretests and dress rehearsals
The 1970 pretests and dress rehearsals foreshadowed resistance to the census. The pretest in New Haven, Connecticut, in April 1967, experienced “a considerable number of letters attacking the New Haven Census as an invasion of privacy” (Miller Reference Miller1967: 747). A year later, the New Haven Register was still reporting on resistance to the census: “What the cries of protest seemed to promise is a nationwide vocal reverberation of shattering proportions when the census is taken … In a day when more and more grounds appear for fearing a centralized, computerized ‘Big Brother’ type of informational bank on every soul in this country, the need for clear and specific definitions of bureaucratic roles and powers is imperative” (US Congress 1969a: 143). The Census Bureau believed the antagonistic response from New Haven residents was related to the “complex and bulky document used,” a question asking for Social Security numbers, “as well as several others” (Miller Reference Miller1967: 747). While the Bureau acknowledged that the inclusion of a Social Security number for each respondent was desirable, the “time and conditions [were] not considered ripe” for their inclusion on the 1970 census (Miller Reference Miller1967: 747). A “blast” by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was also blamed for the poor response rates in New Haven. This was not the first time the ACLU raised the ire of the Census Bureau. On April 11, 1960, the Census Bureau Associate Director of Demographic Fields, Conrad Taeuber, terminated his ACLU membership “effective immediately,” in response to the organization’s “attack” challenging questions on the 1960 census form after the canvass had begun (Taeuber Reference Taeuber1960).
A dress rehearsal in Dane County (Madison), Wisconsin, in May 1968 was “widely” publicized in the media and received “substantial” reaction against the census. WMTV in Madison, Wisconsin, ran an editorial, encouraging its viewers to “oppose the encyclopedia course for which the Census Bureau seems to be heading” (US Congress 1969a: 143). The Dane County pretest was “an undesirable … even dangerous … precedent.” The editorial went on to say that “if you thought the special census was rather probing … you haven’t seen anything yet” (US Congress 1969a: 143).
A Wisconsin state assembly member “urged his constituents not to answer questions other than those asking name, address, sex, and marital status” (US Bureau of the Census 1976: 2–16). The National Right to Privacy Committee distributed flyers and published warnings in local newspapers that “this massive government intrusion on your privacy” was going to descend upon Dane County in the form of a test census (The National Right to Privacy Committee 1968). People who objected to this “government harassment” were urged by the National Right to Privacy Committee to write to their government officials (Miller Reference Miller1967: 747). The names and addresses to whom the letters should be sent were included in the publicity (The National Right to Privacy Committee 1968; US Bureau of the Census 1976). Despite “major newspaper advertising” by the National Right to Privacy Committee, 85 percent of Dane County’s 250,000 residents responded to enumerators/forms for the test census within two days. After a week, the response rate was up to 90 percent (US Congress 1969a: 717).
The dress rehearsals in Sumter and Chesterfield Counties, South Carolina, also in May 1968, revealed that rural Americans, too, were “affected by the invasion of privacy issue” (US Bureau of the Census 1976: 2-17) In a letter to the editor of a Columbia, South Carolina newspaper, one concerned individual wrote, “It seems that each citizen, regardless of what state he is from, should oppose the Census Bureau’s peeking into every area of his life, including the bedroom. If the people do not protest this type of census, we are likely to be faced with it ourselves in 1970” (Taylor Reference Taylor1968: 12). After the dress rehearsals, Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC) announced his plans to “amend census laws to eliminate mandatory answers to questions” which in his view were “too undignified to discuss” and “too embarrassing” to print (Columbia Record 1968; The Greenville News 1968). It was after the Sumter dress rehearsal that the Census Bureau concluded that enumerators and the public needed a clear explanation for “why specific census questions were being asked, so that invasion of privacy would not arise as an issue” (US Bureau of the Census 1976: p 2–17).
Four months later, in September 1968, the dress rehearsal in Trenton, New Jersey, benefited from what the Bureau learned in Dane, Sumter, and Chesterfield counties. Adjustments were made by the Bureau to the census questionnaires, both in terms of format and questions asked. Other forms of publicity were used ahead of the dress rehearsal to alert the public to the dress rehearsal, and enumerator instructions on the census form were clarified. A local community action agency in Trenton received private funding to sponsor a public information program on the coming census. Through this program, block parties, receptions, and publicity all advocated cooperation with the census for the benefit of the entire community. Bureau review of the Trenton dress rehearsal revealed that while people “seemed to have no pronounced attitudes either for or against the census,” a reluctance “to divulge any information they thought might be used against them” prevailed (US Bureau of the Census 1976: 2-18-19).
Resistance to the 1970 census
For the first time, in 1970, most people received a self-enumeration questionnaire, a “mailout-mailback” census form. The census forms were divided into “short” (80 percent of households) and “long” forms (20 percent of households). The short-form population questions required every household to answer name, relationship to head of household, color or race, age, month and year of birth, and marital status. The long form contained forty-one questions (with sub-questions for a total of 82 questions, including the questions on the short form) (US Bureau of the Census 1976). The Los Angeles Times reported that the use of the mailout-mailback census forms was intentional on the part of the Census Bureau to “blur its big brother image by minimizing house calls” (Eaton Reference Eaton1969: F1). The Providence Journal also reported that the “New do-it-yourself techniques would spare most Americans from face-to-face meetings with census-takers,” making the 1970 census “the most private ever conducted” (US Congress 1969e: 627).
To assuage public concern about the snooping 1970 census, each census form went out with a cover letter from the Secretary of Commerce, Maurice H. Stans (Figure 2). Secretary Stan’s letter assured Americans: “Your answers to the census questions are confidential. They can be used only for statistical purposes. They can be seen only by census employees who are prohibited by law from disclosing them to anyone in or out of the Government” [italics in original] (US Bureau of the Census 1976: p1-16-17 and p1-74). For some people, Stan’s letter had the opposite of its intended effect.
Cover Letter for the 1970 mailout Census Form (USCB 1976).
Once the 1970 decennial census was underway, beginning April 1, conscientious objectors used civil disobedience to draw attention to their concerns and to encourage others to join the resistance. Americans used a variety of forms of resistance to protest the 1970 census. One form of civil disobedience was simply refusing to complete the entire census form. Other objectors returned their forms partially completed, with their rationale for omitting particular responses. Grassroots organizers called for people to demonstrate against the census by attending public protests. A small number of Americans were willing to have their willful non-response brought to trial as test cases for the constitutionality of the 1970 census population questionnaire. Finally, some elected officials, alarmed by the perceived intrusiveness of the 1970 census, worked to guide legislation through Congress to address their concerns and those of their constituents.
Resistance to the 1970 census: Individual refusals
We identified forty-two letters protesting the 1970 census at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). These letters reveal that a subpopulation of the American people was anxious about disclosure of their private information, “snooping” by the federal government, and uncomfortable with what they perceived as federal overreach of the original intent of the Constitution for enumerating the population. As early as the summer of 1968, one Michigan TV station was urging its listeners to write “a short angry note” to their representatives protesting the “nosy” 1970 census (WJBK-TV2 1968).
Thirteen letter-writers explicitly responded to the cover letter from Secretary of Commerce Stans, and particularly to his promises of confidentiality. One such letter began,
This letter comes in response to that nauseating bit of tripe written over your facsimile signature that accompanied the census form … one of our country’s greatest problems … is the continual, insidious, insistent snooping and prying of the government into every nook and cranny of the citizenry’s lives. You [sic] damn right information about me is confidential, and I am exercising my traditional and constitutional right to keep it that way, namely, by refusing to divulge anything to a bunch of untrustworthy bureaucrats (Gardner Reference Gardner1970).
The confidentiality assurances in Stans’s cover letter may have backfired. This should not be surprising; experimental survey research studies provide evidence that promises of confidentiality do not reduce concerns about privacy or improve cooperation with the census. Indeed, such studies found that strong assurances of confidentiality can increase concerns about privacy and reduce response rates to surveys (Berman et al. Reference Berman, McCombs and Barouch1977; Frey Reference Frey1986; Reamer Reference Reamer1979; Singer et al. Reference Singer, Hippier and Schwarz1992).
Disclosure to the US government, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was a concern of some letter writers. For example, one New York resident sent letters of refusal to the President of the United States, the Secretary of Commerce, and the Director of the Census Bureau. Primary concerns were related to disclosure of census information to other governmental agencies: “I am writing to say that I will not complete the 1970 census … You have stated that this information is confidential. I don’t trust you. We know that the CIA, Selective Service System, FBI, local police departments and state patrols are unscrupulous in their use of government files, wire-taps and discriminating harassment toward ‘undesirables’. With this government, nothing is confidential!” (Shaw Reference Shaw1970). Director of the Census Bureau George H. Brown replied, “I have read your letters carefully and have given serious thought to the points you have made. I believe you mean what you say. I also mean it when I say the census is secret. Nobody has gotten any census data about an individual since 1900, and nobody is going to get the 1970 data” (Brown Reference Brown1970c).
One Cleveland, Ohio, resident objected to the 1970 census on the grounds that the Census Bureau could not be trusted to keep the information from other federal agencies. “It is my belief that certain of the questions request confidential information which, frankly, I cannot trust the Census Bureau with” (Kancler Reference Kancler1970a). Deputy Director of the Bureau Robert F. Drury responded: “I cannot emphasize too strongly that the Bureau has never been known to have breached its pledge of confidentiality. Neither the F.B.I., nor the C.I.A., nor any other Federal agency can or has obtained confidential individual information furnished to the Bureau in a census” (Drury Reference Drury1970). The letter’s writer countered that he was only answering questions he believed to be within the Bureau’s constitutional mandate (Kancler Reference Kancler1970b).
Other writers agreed and connected their resistance to the census not only with government prying or sharing the information with other federal agencies, but also with government overreach. Some argued that the original Constitutional mandate for an enumeration did not include questions like those on the long form (Gibbs Reference Gibbs1970). One correspondent from Lexington, Missouri, complained to President Nixon and their representatives in the House and Senate: “This form contains all of the earmarks of true big brotherism that I had hoped when I voted for you to see disappear out of our lives … these questions have absolutely nothing to do with census enumeration … but instead constitute serious invasion of my constitutional guaranteed rights of privacy” (Collins Reference Collins1970a, Reference Collinsb, Reference Collinsc).Footnote 3 For those whom even a “short angry note” might be difficult to compose, The Herald in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, provided a template: “Mr. President: I shall not surrender to the invasion of my privacy by cooperating with the 1970 federal census in its present form, and I strenuously object to answering questions other than those necessary for enumerating citizenry. Further, as a citizen, I abhor the action of my government in forcing me to submit under threat of fine and imprisonment to unwarranted inquiries into my personal life” (The Herald 1969). Others simply summed up their concerns as a violation of the US Constitution (Garrou Reference Garrou1970; Miller Reference Miller1970).
Local newspapers captured the sentiment of individual Americans: “National anger should mount over the authoritarian, privacy-invading set of questions which the Bureau of the Census plans to ask American citizens in 1970 … A decennial census is necessary, and answers to pertinent questions should be required. The trouble with the plans set up for the 1970 census is that a large number of the queries are impertinent in the fullest sense of the word” (Casper Star-Tribune (Wyoming), March 27, 1969, in US Congress 1969a: 164). In the Saginaw News (Michigan), “When does the federal decennial census cease being a necessary head count of Americans and become an oppressive and possibly menacing invasion of privacy?” (Saginaw News (Michigan), March 6, 1969, in US Congress 1969a: 168) The Indianapolis News claimed that “Protests continue to accumulate about the projected census of 1970” and “Opponents … range across the political spectrum from left to right”. The “common concern” of these protesters was the “prying into personal matters which are no business of the government” by the 1970 census of population form. (Indianapolis News, April 1, 1969, in US Congress. 1969a: 163).
A transcript from a recorded phone message, transmitted by an unattributed source in over two hundred cities in April 1969, likened the information gathered by “the Federal snoopers of the Bureau of the Census” to the “dossiers” collected by the Nazis or Russia “and its slave satellites” (“Transcribed” 1969). The transcript claimed that “The Constitution does not give the Congress or anyone else the power to pry into your personal life with such questions as “with whom do you share your bathroom,” “how many babies have you had,” “did you work last week and if so where?” The “Census snooper” would ask questions on income and the source and “Your answers had better jibe with what you put on your tax return or you will be subject to criminal prosecution by both Commerce Department for perjury and the IRS for possible income tax evasion” (“Transcribed” 1969). Those interested in further information about “the new Federal Snooper Core” were instructed to send twenty-five cents to an address in McLean, Virginia. The phone message was denounced as “a truly awe-inspiring sequence of falsehoods” (“Transcribed” 1969; US Congress 1969a: 406).
Grassroots organizers encouraged people not to complete their census form on the grounds that it was an invasion of privacy by an overgrown federal government (Sansweet Reference Sansweet1970; Committee for a Voluntary Census 1970). A “Committee for a Voluntary Census” mailed out over 50,000 brochures titled “Big Brother is Snooping.” The brochure asked readers to consider, “Where should the line be drawn between the government’s alleged need for information and the individual’s right to privacy—the right to keep information to himself (as upheld by the Bill of Rights) and to refuse to give answers to the Census taker’s questions?” (Census Resistance ’70 [1970]; Sansweet Reference Sansweet1970: 1; Voluntary Census Committee 1980). Protesters believed “the place to draw the line between the government and the individual is on this census” and were willing to be arrested for civil disobedience (Census Resistance ’70 [1970]).
The Committee for a Voluntary Census was reportedly “developing pockets of resistance” to the 1970 census, organizing anti-census demonstrations in eighteen major cities on January 31, 1970, including a picket line at the US Census Bureau headquarters in Washington, DC. On February 28, 1970, demonstrations were organized by the Committee in forty-five cities (Catchpole Reference Catchpole1970; Committee for a Voluntary Census 1970). The Committee had 110 “affiliated” locations, and these locations launched a door-to-door canvass, raising awareness of the perils of increasing government intrusion through the 1970 census. The committee also claimed to extend its reach through the distribution of its literature to “political clubs, friends and business associates, college campuses and social gatherings” (Catchpole Reference Catchpole1970; 8).
Trials for non-response and civil disobedience against the 1970 census were rare. According to a memo from the Director of the Bureau of the Census to the Deputy General Counsel, “the census resistance movement which threatened to develop in late February and early March, failed to achieve any measurable impact on the actual conduct of the 1970 census” (Brown Reference Brown1970b: 1). The Director of the Bureau of the Census noted that “we have a handful of publicly brandished refusals that we are pursuing” (Brown Reference Brown1970b: 1). The “small number” of “non publicly” stated refusals were tidily “converted by our persuasive processes” (Brown Reference Brown1970b: 1). For example, a Delaware resident refused to answer “certain” questions on the 1970 census schedule, a violation of the 1954 US statute authorizing the Census. The case against the protester was dismissed by the court on the technicality that the charge of willfully refusing to answer “certain” questions was vague; the charge did not specify the exact questions he refused to answer (United States v. Thomas Little, Crim. A. No. 2054).
Correspondence in the Director of Demographic Fields files, titled “Hawaiian Refusals,” reported on four Hawaiian census dissenters in July 1970 (Erickson Reference Erickson1970). All four men were “the most vehement in their attacks” (Brown Reference Brown1970a: 2) and “repeatedly urged people to resist the involuntary nature of the census” (Samuels Reference Samuels1979). William Danks headed the state chapter of a group called “Census Resistance ’70,” which organized the distribution of pamphlets calling for census civil disobedience and publicly criticized the canvass. Donald Dickinson spoke against the census as an announcer on station KTRG. William Steele refused to complete the 1970 census on the grounds that it was self-incriminating and an unconstitutional invasion of privacy. Steele held a press conference, led a protest march, and distributed copies of the Committee for a Voluntary Census literature, “Big Brother is Snooping.” For not fully answering the questionnaire, he was fined $50 by the court. In Steele’s view, he was unfairly targeted by the court for prosecution because he had publicly and actively participated in resisting the 1970 census. Steele appealed his conviction, and a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed, overturning his conviction (United States v. William Steele 1972). David Watamull was the owner of the Hawaiian radio station KTRG. Radio editorials on the census “were calculated to incite people to subvert census law,” according to census authorities, who reported the programming to the Federal Communications Commission (United States v. William Steele 1972). Watamull was running in the primary for the Republican nomination for governor and perhaps believed interest in his campaign from politically conservative constituents would be generated by the publicity (Brown Reference Brown1970a: 1–2). The Director of the Bureau of the Census believed these dissenters “who have flaunted the law and greatly increased the problems of conducting the census on Hawaii should not be permitted to escape the consequences of their actions” (Brown Reference Brown1970a: 2).
The 1970 census procedural history concluded that “in the form of willful nonresponse or obstruction” was less than the pretests in 1968 and 1969 had led them to expect (US Bureau of the Census 1976: 14). The Census Bureau thus expected to easily manage non-response refusals in the form of letters, public protests, and a few court cases within the existing Bureau infrastructure.
Resistance to the 1970 census: Elected officials
During the 1960s, 140 congressional representatives proposed legislation to address concerns about individual privacy versus public need. By mid-April 1969, 65 bills were introduced in the House of Representatives by members of both Republican and Democratic parties to limit the 1970 census (US Bureau of the Census 1976, p1–16; US Congress 1969a: 401).Footnote 4
The most prominent crusader against the proposed 1970 census was Republican Congressman Jackson Betts (OH), who sponsored legislation to limit the number of mandatory census questions “to seven simple, direct questions to meet constitutional requirements for congressional redistricting” (Betts Reference Betts1967): name, address, age, relationship to head of household, sex, marital status, and visitors in the home at the time of the census. Under Betts’s legislation, all other questions, including race, would be “voluntary” (Betts Reference Betts1969). Betts claimed that “demand for census reform stems from a growing fear by the American people of big government and the infringement on their rights to privacy” (Betts Reference Betts1969).
When the Census Bureau made repeated claims that the confidentiality of all the information it collected was protected by federal law, Betts retorted that confidentiality was not the issue; privacy was the issue: “Personal privacy is invaded when sensitive facts are extracted from an individual against his will. I believe privacy to be not simply the absence of information about people, rather it is the control persons have over facts about themselves. The intrusion takes place with the compulsion to divulge personal data, not in the handling of such facts by the government” (US Congress 1969a: 585). He said, “Every time the privacy issue is raised as an individual’s right to be protected against compulsory intrusion into sensitive personal facts about himself, it is met by further pledges of confidentiality once such facts are extracted and stored in Government files” (US Congress 1969c: 4). According to Betts, “It is the return to the constitutional purpose of the census through Congressional action in addition to a desperately needed legal basis of personal privacy which prompts my colleagues and me to seek an alteration of present census policy” (Robertson Reference Robertson1969: 36; US Congress 1969b: 735).
Betts’s repeated assertion that the 1970 form contained the question, “with whom do you share a bathroom” was the subject of a cartoonist’s humor, depicting an enumerator “poised with questionnaire in a bathroom, shouting through the steamy shower curtain to a hidden citizen: ‘Is anyone in there with you?’” (Robertson Reference Robertson1969; US Congress 1969b: 735). In the fall of 1967, Betts had predicted that if the Bureau did not make changes to the 1970 census questionnaire, “many angry constituents” would “rebel against these 1970s invasions of privacy” (Betts Reference Betts1967, Reference Betts1970).
Democratic Senator Sam J. Ervin (NC), among others on both sides of the aisle, agreed:
Do you feel strongly that your personal and financial affairs are nobody else’s business? That the 1st Amendment protects not only your right to speak but also to keep silent about yourself? That a man’s home is guaranteed him by the Constitution? That he should not be coerced into disclosing what goes on inside unless he chooses to? Do governmental threats of fines and jail sentences for declining to answer questions about such intimate matters strike you as being devious? If so, you are squarely in the American tradition—and also out of step with the creeping erosion of these basic freedoms underlying our 1970 census (Catchpole Reference Catchpole1970: 8).
In the lead-up to the nineteenth decennial census, elected officials on both sides of the aisle were drawing attention to the 1970 questionnaire and the penalties outlined in census law for failure to respond.
In May 1969, the House Subcommittee on Census and Statistics of the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service hosted three days of hearings to hear “firsthand, the views of local citizens regarding the controversial issue raised” by the 1970 census (US Congress 1969e: 437). The opening statement by the presiding chairperson framed the proceedings in the context of growing national awareness of the looming decennial census:
Newspaper articles, and radio and television editorials commenting upon the ‘extremely personal nature’ of the census questions, the threats of fines and imprisonment for failure to answer the census taker, and the alleged unconstitutionality of the 1970 census have provoked a massive citizen protest; and many Members of Congress have responded by introducing legislation designed to limit the number of questions the Census Bureau would be permitted to ask under its mandatory reporting powers … much of the outcry appears to have been deliberately fomented through the issuance of news releases designed to distort and exaggerate the census in order to play upon our natural fears of governmental snooping into our private lives (US Congress 1969e: 437).
Sixty-one people weighed in on the 1970 census of population during the three days of hearings. Twenty-five of those attendees expressed concern that the 1970 census was an invasion of privacy, constitutional overreach, or both. These statements express the same sentiments as the letters that ended up in the National Archives collection. For example, “I’m a private citizen, and I hope after today I can keep my business private. I’m here to testify as to why I’m opposed to the 1970 census. I feel you must remove completely the penalty of a fine or jail sentence for any citizen who refuses to answer the majority of probing questions which I consider to be an overwhelming invasion of privacy” (US Congress 1969e: 601). Others were even more forceful in their objections to the 1970 census:
I consider the majority of the questions an incredible invasion of privacy. Can the Government force me to abridge my conscience and my sense of morality by answering these questions? Next, the census form states that all information it receives is confidential and may be seen only by sworn Census employees and may be used only for statistical purposes. Who are the Census employees? As the Supreme Court has recently ruled that a Communist might work in a defense plant, isn’t it possible that a Communist might be employed by the Census Bureau? If this should ever occur, the assurances about keeping the statistics confidential would be hollow indeed (US Congress 1969e: 611).
Back in Washington, Congressman Jackson Betts boasted that “practically everybody that I find who really learns what the subject matter of my proposal is all about has given it enthusiastic and unqualified support” (Burke Reference Burke1970: 1; Manion Forum 1969: 3). While an overstatement, Betts’s House peers recognized him as the instigator who “stirred up a hornet’s nest” and kept public attention on the scope of the 1970 census questions and “the Dark Ages threat of a prison sentence for failure to respond” to the census questionnaire (Congressional Record 1969: 27020 and 27023).
The report published by the Subcommittee on Census and Statistics of the House Post Office and Civil Service Committee tells a different story. Included in the report are over three hundred communications “representative of those received” by the committee from constituents objecting to legislation proposing to limit the 1970 census or make it voluntary (US Congress 1969d). Although Betts was unsuccessful in getting his bill passed, his efforts stimulated an animated public debate around privacy in the 1970 census.
Conclusion
To better understand heightened public concern surrounding the 1970 census, we examined individual refusals to respond to the census by members of the public, the Census Bureau’s responses to such refusals, statements presented at congressional hearings by concerned members of the public, and the efforts by elected officials to limit the census. These specific individual complaints reveal the motives of the conscientious objectors to the 1970 census.
Most Americans who objected to the 1970 census were concerned about governmental invasion of their privacy. The cover letter from Secretary of Commerce Stans that accompanied the 1970 census form sought to assuage these concerns with promises of confidentiality. Some members of the public responded that the Census Bureau could not be trusted to keep the census responses secret. None of the complaints, however, expressed fear that their census responses would become public; rather, they were concerned that other government agencies, especially the CIA, the FBI, and the Selective Service – would gain access to the information. Congressman Jackson Betts understood what Census Bureau officials did not: average Americans were concerned about privacy, not confidentiality:
I think a great many people fail to distinguish between the right to privacy and confidentiality. Many people think this question is completely answered when we have increased the penalties on release of information that is given to the Census Bureau with the understanding that it is confidential. Again I would like to distinguish between the right to privacy, which I think means taking the form of forcing a person to give information which he does not want to give … Confidentiality relates to release of information which has been given—release by people other than themselves … I believe that is the difference. I do not believe we have really gone into the question of the right to privacy in this case, when we strengthen, as we do, the penalties for violations of confidentiality. Of that I approve 100 percent, but I do not believe it answer the objections so far as invasion of the right to privacy are concerned (Congressional Record 1969: 27038).
In addition to the concern that the information on the census questionnaire would be disclosed by the Bureau to intergovernmental agencies like the CIA and the FBI, the letters and acts of civil disobedience reflect several other concerns about the 1970 census form. Most letter writers argued that the questionnaire was too invasive, “snooping” for information that was none of the Bureau’s business. Still others argued that intrusive questions in the 1970 Census exceeded the constitutional mandate for enumeration of the population. As Nelson (Reference Nelson2002) suggests, new anxieties about privacy in the 1960s may have been stimulated by the Griswold decision that found a constitutional right to privacy. Such anxieties also contributed to the “Big Brother” furor over the proposed national data center in the mid-1960s, which in turn further stirred concerns about governmental invasion of privacy.
By the time of the 1980 Census, public anti-census sentiment had dissipated. Theodore G. Clemence, chief of the Census Bureau’s office of program and policy development, said, “There were scattered protests against the 1980 census over the weekend, but census officials said they were much fewer than in the past … These do not add up to very much; compared to 1970 it’s a tea party.” Donald Ernsberger, a grassroots organizer against the 1970 census, continued protesting the snooping 1980 census, but he admitted that, “The Census Bureau finds it easier to just ignore us.” (Reinhold Reference Reinhold1980: 1).
The tensions between privacy and confidentiality that erupted in the late 1960s have not disappeared. The US Census Bureau has continued to conflate the concepts of privacy and confidentiality. The 2020 Census adopted a new disclosure control strategy that marks a “sea change for the way that official statistics are produced and published” (Garfinkel et al. Reference Garfinkel, Abowd and Powazek2018: 136). In particular, the Census Bureau adopted a new formal definition of privacy known as “differential privacy.” To minimize “privacy loss,” the 2020 Census added deliberate error to every population statistic for every geographic unit smaller than a state, including metropolitan areas, cities, and counties. Critics of the new Census Bureau privacy measures argue that the new measures were not needed and damage census usability and accuracy (Ruggles Reference Ruggles2024). Even more extreme disclosure control measures – once again justified as privacy protection – are now threatening access to the most intensively used research dataset produced by the Census Bureau, the American Community Survey (Ruggles Reference Ruggles2025).Footnote 5
By redefining privacy and treating privacy and confidentiality as interchangeable, the Census Bureau has failed to address the root problem. Congressman Betts had it right: privacy is the issue, not confidentiality. Disclosure controls do not address privacy concerns. If the public is worried about government intrusion into their personal affairs, suppressing public access to accurate census data will not help assuage their fears.
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