Mel Wulf was one of the biggest contributors to the founding of Friends of Straus Park. As a long-time lawyer for FOSP he helped our organization incorporate, protect our board members and structure our taxes as a non-profit. Without his due diligence and charitable contributions through the years, as well as the work of his wife, Diedre Wulf, we would not be the influential conservancy that we are today.
Melvin Lawrence Wulf was born on Nov. 1, 1927, in Brooklyn. He intending to enter the family clothing business, attending the Lowell Textile Institute in Massachusetts for three years. But in 1950 he transferred to Columbia University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in general studies in 1952. After graduating from Columbia Law School in 1955, he spent two years as a lawyer in the Navy. He joined the A.C.L.U. in 1958 as assistant legal director and rose to legal director four years later. As legal director for 15 years, and a constitutional lawyer, he made the A.C.L.U. a more aggressive organization and litigated ten cases before the United States Supreme Court. He worked with Ruth Bader Ginsburg before she became a United States Supreme Court justice and supporter her in bringing a landmark sex discrimination case.
Under Mr. Wulf’s leadership, the A.C.L.U. opposed the Vietnam War, represented conscientious objectors and organized the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee, a network of lawyers drawn from several groups, including the A.C.L.U., the N.A.A.C.P. and the American Jewish Committee. It provided legal representation for students, both Black and white, who traveled to the South to register Black voters during the Freedom Summer in 1964. By directly representing clients, Wulf put the A.C.L.U. in the middle of the great political movements for justice and equality, namely the civil rights, antiwar and women’s movements.”
After leaving the A.C.L.U., Mr. Wulf formed a law firm with Alan Levine and Ramsey Clark, the former U.S. attorney general. The firm won a Supreme Court case challenging book-banning by a school district on Long Island and successfully defended two authors against libel charges brought by the Church of Scientology.
Mr. Wulf died on July 8, 2022 at his home in Manhattan. He was 95.