Contents

Collection Overview

Biographical Note

Scope and Contents of the Collection

Organization of the Collection

Search Terms

Dorothy Kenyon Papers, 1850-1998

Finding Aid

Finding aid prepared by Kate Weigand.

Encoding funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

2003

Biographical Note

Dorothy Kenyon, born in New York City on February 17, 1888, was the oldest of three children and the only daughter of prominent patent attorney William H. Kenyon, and Cincinnati, Ohio native Maria Wellington (Stanwood) Kenyon. Raised in the privileged environments of Manhattan's Upper West Side and her family's summer home in Lakeville, Connecticut, Kenyon excelled at the progressive Horace Mann High School from which she in graduated 1904. At Smith College she majored in economics and history and participated in numerous activities ranging from music to championship tennis and hockey. Kenyon was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year and graduated with an A.B. from Smith in 1908.

Though she often claimed that she had made the decision to become a lawyer when she was still a small child, Kenyon also conceded that she had "misspent" the years from 1908-1913 as a "social butterfly." It was only after a year in Mexico where she observed poverty and injustice at close range that Kenyon acquired her "slant to the left," decided upon her vocation, and transformed herself into a social activist. Kenyon entered New York University Law School at the age of 26 in 1914 and obtained her J.D. degree and admission to the New York Bar in 1917.

Unlike her two brothers Theodore Stanwood Kenyon and William Houston Kenyon Jr. who also became lawyers, Kenyon had a highly developed sense of public obligation kept her from joining the family law firm. Instead she began her legal career in 1917 with a brief stint as a law clerk in the New York firm Gwinn and Deming. Later that year she established herself more firmly in the legal profession through her work for the U.S. government in Washington, D.C., researching wartime labor patterns and collecting economic data for the 1919 Peace Conference. At the end of 1919 she returned to New York City and joined the firm Pitkin, Rosenson and Henderson. In 1925--the year she finally moved out of her father's house and into her own apartment--Kenyon also opened her own law office. In 1930 she joined forces with another woman lawyer, Dorothy Straus. They practiced law as Straus and Kenyon until 1939.

In keeping with her decision to work for social justice, Kenyon devoted a great deal of her energy in the 1930s and throughout her career to a variety of liberal and progressive causes, including the New Deal, women's rights, the labor movement, and consumer cooperatives. She served on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union from its inception in 1930. By the mid-1930s the combination of her legal credentials and her commitment to social justice won her various public appointments. In 1934, for example, she was appointed a member of the New York City Comptroller's Advisory Council on Taxes for the Relief of the Unemployed, and in 1936 she chaired a committee to study procedure in women's courts where she called for more sympathetic treatment of prostitutes and stronger prosecution of the men who patronized them. In 1936 she became the First Deputy Commissioner of Licenses in New York City and in 1937 she served as Vice Chair of the New York Commission of the National Public Housing Conference. Kenyon was a charismatic speaker and she regularly traveled around the U.S. lecturing about civil liberties, the law, women's equality, and numerous other subjects. She often reworked her addresses and published them as articles. Kenyon's writings appeared frequently in a variety of publications ranging from the Smith College Alumnae Quarterl, to American Girl Magazine to the Encyclopedia Britannica. At the end of 1939 Fiorello LaGuardia appointed Kenyon to fill a vacancy on the Municipal Court bench, a position in which she served until November of 1940. Despite her short tenure on the bench, Kenyon was known to many as "Judge Kenyon" for the rest of her life.

Dorothy Kenyon identified herself as a feminist and, though she played only a minor role in the suffrage movement, she served as an officer in several women's organizations that aimed to improve women's status in the 1920s and 1930s. Although she had lengthy and intense romantic relationships with various men (including Walcott Pitkin, Elihu Root Jr., and L.V. Pulsifer) over the course of her adult life, Kenyon was fiercely independent and made a conscious decision not to marry. Throughout her career she devoted special attention to the issues of jury service for women, equality in marriage, the legalization of birth control, and improved educational and economic opportunities for women. Kenyon gained national prominence as a feminist activist in 1938 when she was named the U.S. representative to the League of Nations Committee for the Study of the Status of Women, a group of seven lawyers charged with studying women's legal status internationally. World War II interrupted the committee's work and it was never completed. Kenyon resumed her commitment to improving women's status around the world through her work as the U.S. delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women from 1946-1950.

Already well-known in academic, legal, and political circles, in 1950 Dorothy Kenyon made national news when Senator Joseph R. McCarthy charged her with membership in numerous Communist-front organizations. Kenyon responded aggressively to McCarthy's accusations by declaring: "He's a lowdown worm and although it ought to be beneath my dignity to answer him, I'm mad enough to say that he's a liar and he can go to hell." As the first person to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that investigated McCarthy's charges she admitted that she had lent her name to various liberal and anti-fascist organizations, but forcefully denied that she had ever been a member or supporter of the Communist Party.

In the wake of her confrontation with McCarthy, Kenyon received widespread support from the liberal press and from respected public figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt. Her fearless defiance and unabashed condemnation of the Senator and his tactics undoubtedly contributed to his eventual downfall. Despite such vindication, the experience tarnished Kenyon's reputation to the degree that she never received another political appointment. Nevertheless, she sustained her busy law practice and, as progressive social movements resurged in the 1960s, escalated her already intense involvement in both national and local politics.

As a longtime supporter of civil rights, Kenyon prepared briefs for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the ACLU, fought segregation in the New York City schools, and participated in numerous civil rights marches. She participated in various aspects of President Johnson's War on Poverty and at age 80 she worked tirelessly and almost single-handedly to establish legal services for the poor on the Lower West Side. She continued her feminist activism throughout the 1950s and 1960s by pushing the ACLU to take a stand against sexist policies and institutions and, once they had done so, working with African-American activist and attorney Pauli Murray on preparing briefs for cases that challenged sex discrimination. In the last few years of her life Kenyon, along with many women of her generation who had opposed the ERA because of the negative implications they believed it held for working-class women, joined the pro-ERA forces. She also joined with much younger feminists in the emerging women's liberation movement where she participated in the 1971 Women's Strike for Equality and in the burgeoning movement to legalize abortion.

In addition to her numerous professional and political commitments, Dorothy Kenyon also maintained a busy social life. She had friends of all ages in New York and around the world, but her closest personal relationships centered around "Barn House," a rustic estate jointly owned by a small group of East coast liberal intellectuals in Chilmark on Martha's Vineyard. Kenyon joined Gertrude and Stanley King, Natalie and Adam Haskell, and Wolcott Pitkin in founding Barn House in 1919. Over the years Barn House members and guests included such notables as Crystal and Max Eastman, Roger and Evelyn Baldwin, Walter Lippman, Felix Frankfurter, and Sylvia Plath, among many others. In order to take advantage of its relaxing yet intellectually stimulating environment, Kenyon participated actively in administering Barn House and spent time there every summer from 1919 until 1971.

When Dorothy Kenyon was diagnosed with cancer in 1969 she concealed the severity of her illness from most people and refused to suspend or even curtail her legal or political work. Active and articulate as an advocate for social justice until the very end, Dorothy Kenyon died one week before her 84th birthday on February 11, 1972.

For for additional biographical information, see Bibliography.

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Scope and Contents of the Collection

The Dorothy Kenyon Papers consist of 29 linear feet of material dating from 1850-1998. The bulk of the papers date from 1888-1972 and focus on Kenyon's personal, professional, and political activities. Types of material include personal records and memorabilia; newspaper clippings; interview transcripts; financial records; family correspondence and memorabilia; personal and professional correspondence; published and unpublished writings; speeches; legal documents; organizational records; research files; photographs; miscellaneous notes, lists, and printed matter; and audiotapes of interviews and speeches.

Major subjects reflected in the collection include the status and role of women in the U.S. and internationally, U.S. and international law, domestic and foreign policy, abortion rights, civil rights, civil liberties, consumer rights, the cooperative movement, Democratic Party politics, Senator Joseph McCarthy, U.S. anti-communism, the War on Poverty in New York City, the Equal Rights Amendment, and the Women's Liberation movement. Organizations represented include the ACLU, NAACP, Americans for Democratic Action, various United Nations and League of Nations Committees, Mobilization for Youth, the Citizens Union of NYC, the American Labor Party, and others. The papers offer insight into the life of a pioneering woman lawyer, judge, and political figure. Kenyon was among the first women to gain admittance to the New York City Bar Association. She was active on local, state, national, and international levels in the fight for human rights, women's rights, and civil rights. In addition to illuminating Kenyon's own work for her causes, the papers document 20th century social reform movements in general. Race relations, urban reform policies, court reform, public housing, community development programs, and political activities from the 1890s to the 1970s are some of the many topics addressed in the papers.

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Search Terms

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Organization of the Collection

This collection is organized into ten series:

• I. Biographical Material
• II. Family
• III. Correspondence
• IV. Speeches and Writings
• V. Legal Practice
• VI. Activities and Organization
• VII. Research Files
• VIII. Photographs
• IX. Audiovisual Material
• X. Oversize Material

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SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL (1888-1980) 2.8 linear feet

This series includes a variety of material by and about Dorothy Kenyon that documents her personal history, her professional activities, and her wide-ranging accomplishments. It is arranged in the following subseries: Writings about Kenyon, Interviews, Tributes and testimonials, Education, Awards, Honorary degrees, Memberships, Legal documents, Financial documents, Contacts, Calendars, Professional credentials, Funeral records, and Memorabilia. The bulk of the items in this series date from 1920-71. Memorabilia contains a significant amount of material from Kenyon's infancy and childhood, including a meticulously detailed baby book kept by her father, William Stanton Kenyon. Writings about Kenyon includes biographical and autobiographical material, resumes, newspaper clippings and an unpublished scholarly article. The material assembled by Kenyon's sister-in-law and prospective biographer Mildred Adams Kenyon consists of approximately 1 linear foot containing research notes, correspondence, reminiscences, a few photographs, and a complete draft of Mildred Kenyon's unpublished book. This material is particularly rich as it contains a great deal of information about Dorothy Kenyon's childhood and personal life that is not evident in the documents she herself saved. This subseries spans the years from 1924 until 1980 when Mildred Adams Kenyon died. See also oral history tapes in SERIES IX. AUDIOVISUAL MATERIAL.

SERIES II. FAMILY (1850-1998) 1.6 linear feet

This series consists primarily of correspondence but it also contains financial records, keepsakes, legal documents, memorabilia, newspaper clippings, and writings generated by or about various members of Kenyon's extended family between 1850 and 1998. The series is divided into two subseries: Individuals and Special events. Individuals is arranged alphabetically with material about miscellaneous family members filed at the end of the subseries. Each person's file contains various types of material by or about them. These papers document individuals' lives but they also reveal a great deal about interpersonal relationships, early 20th-century upper-middle-class child-rearing practices, and Kenyon family history. Most of the keepsakes, financial documents, memorabilia and writings in this series originated with Kenyon's father William Houston Kenyon. Special events includes MATERIAL related to William Stanton Kenyon's wedding to his second wife Lestra Kinney Kenyon in 1909, and the multi-generational Kenyon family railroad trip to the Canadian Rockies in 1969. These are also arranged alphabetically and contain material by or about various members of the Kenyon family. See also oral history tapes in SERIES IX. AUDIOVISUAL MATERIAL, and SERIES VIII. PHOTOGRAPHS.

SERIES III. CORRESPONDENCE (1917-1971) 3.3 linear feet

This series contains both personal and professional correspondence. Family correspondence can be found in SERIES II. FAMILY. Correspondence related to specific political appointments, organization work or other activities is filed in the appropriate series. This series is arranged in three subseries: General, Friends and associates, and Letters to the editor. General correspondence includes incoming and outgoing letters dating from 1918 to 1972, with the vast majority of the letters generated between 1949 and 1972. This subseries consists of routine personal, professional and political correspondence arranged chronologically. Typical correspondence included here are personal letters congratulating Kenyon on her various achievements, fundraising requests, holiday greetings, invitations, public response mail, RSVPs, and thank you notes. Friends and associates dates from 1917 to 1971 and contains both personal and professional correspondence arranged alphabetically. It includes such significant signatories as Hubert Humphrey, Fiorello LaGuardia, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, among many others, whose letters demonstrate Kenyon's political prominence during the 1930s-60s. This subseries also includes candid and revealing correspondence with some of Kenyon's most intimate associates such as Walcott Pitkin, Gertrude Besse King, Elihu Root, and L. Valentine Pulsifer. Kenyon's Letters to the editor date from 1948-1971 and are arranged chronologically. They address many and varied topics including civil liberties, civil rights, U.S. foreign policy, New York City and international politics, integration, the legal system, and women's rights.

SERIES IV. SPEECHES AND WRITINGS (1925-1972) 3.75 linear feet

Dorothy Kenyon was a prolific writer and a much sought-after speaker. This series contains published articles, unpublished drafts, speech notes and texts, and related correspondence and publicity. It is arranged in five subseries: Correspondence, Articles and addresses, Book reviews, Encyclopedia entries, and Book-length manuscripts, with each of these arranged chronologically. Correspondence includes primarily writing and speaking invitations and negotiations regarding honoraria and travel arrangements dating from 1946-1970. Articles and addresses comprises the largest category in this series. They date from 1925-71, are arranged chronologically, and include notes, drafts, and final versions of articles and speeches with related publicity enclosed. In keeping with her broad involvement in social justice activities, Kenyon wrote and spoke about a large number of subjects including anti-communism, civil liberties, education, internationalism, politics, racism, and women's rights, among many others. See the >Appendix for a listing of articles and addresses by subject.

SERIES V. LEGAL PRACTICE (1936-1969) 1.25 linear feet

This series contains material that relates directly to Kenyon's legal career. It does not include any client or case files; Houston and Mildred Kenyon, who facilitated the transfer of Kenyon's papers to the Sophia Smith Collection, regarded that material as strictly private. The series is arranged in four subseries: Clients and contacts, Cases, Judicial files, and Research files. Clients and contacts contains lists of Kenyon's clients, lists of the documents and material she held in safekeeping for some of those clients, and contact information for both clients and professional associates. Cases includes appeals, briefs, and motions for cases in which Kenyon was directly involved in her private practice as well as for the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York City Bar Association. These are arranged by case and in chronological order. Judicial files contains a small amount of material Kenyon saved from her short tenure as a municipal judge including a collection of jury charges, an outline of the judge's role during a trial, and one opinion Kenyon rendered as a judge. Research files consists of legal briefs, memoranda, petitions, and printed records of cases in which Kenyon was interested, but not directly involved. These are arranged chronologically.

SERIES VI. ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS (1923-1971) 15.0 linear feet

This series--by far the largest one in the collection--documents the wide range of Kenyon's political and professional interests and activities from the 1920s through 1971. Throughout these five decades Kenyon participated in a vast number of social movements including labor, women's rights, civil liberties, civil rights, international human rights, and the fight against poverty. As a proponent of these causes she was active in scores of organizations that covered the spectrum from radical to liberal. Because of her liberal record and her political skill and effectiveness Kenyon was appointed to highly regarded positions as the U.S. delegate to the League of Nations Committee to Study the Legal Status of Women in 1937 and the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in 1947. For the same reasons she also had to mount a major defense of her political history and reputation after she was targeted by Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1950. The League of Nations, the United Nations, and the McCarthy Hearings--each containing correspondence, committee files, internal memoranda, publications, reports, and research files--represent some of the most important segments of this series. The series is arranged alphabetically by the name of the activity or organization.

The largest amount of material in this series--next to the League of Nations, the McCarthy hearings, and the United Nations--relates to Kenyon's work in the American Civil Liberties Union; to her central role in Chilmark Associates, which managed the Barn House cooperative on Martha's Vineyard; and to her participation in community development activities on the Lower West Side of Manhattan. The ACLU material includes correspondence, committee files, conference programs, newspaper clippings, and research files on issues addressed by the organization such as abortion, race exclusion, sex discrimination, and free speech. Legal cases Kenyon prepared for the ACLU are located in SERIES V. LEGAL PRACTICE. The Chilmark Associates files contain correspondence among members, legal and financial documents, meeting minutes, and reports. Lower West Side Community Development Activities serves as the heading for the large number of organizations that comprised Kenyon's work in the War on Poverty in the 1960s. This material is quite rich and contains correspondence, committee files, minutes, memoranda, proposals, publicity, reports, and financial data for groups such as the Community Corporation of the Lower West Side and Mobilization for Youth. Other major organizations represented in this series include the American Labor Party, Americans for Democratic Action, League for Mutual Aid, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the Women's Strike Coalition.

SERIES VII. SUBJECTS (1925-1971) .4 linear feet

This series is arranged alphabetically by subject and includes topics in which Kenyon had a particular interest including abortion, anti-communism, civil rights, conscription of women into the armed forces, the Equal Rights Amendment, jury service for women, the status of women, and the Supreme Court, among others. It appears that Kenyon kept these files in order to save and organize information that she might later use in her speeches and articles. Some of them, such as the file on the Equal Rights Amendment, consist of a variety of material that was clearly gathered over several decades. Others, such as the file on Richard Nixon contain only one item. Types of material included in this series include articles, newspaper clippings, notes, writings by others, and miscellaneous printed material.

SERIES VIII. PHOTOGRAPHS (1888-1971) .75 linear feet

This series, consists primarily of black-and-white photographic prints. It is arranged in the following subseries: Personal and family; Formal portraits of Kenyon alone; Kenyon in professional settings with groups; Kenyon in her United Nations Work; Kenyon at the McCarthy hearings; and Kenyon receiving honors. The series also includes an album compiled by Kenyon's cousin Katherine Wilby that contains photos of Kenyon's and Wilby's European tour in 1908 and numerous photos of the Kenyon and Wilby families during the years between 1900-1910. See also SERIES X. OVERSIZE MATERIALS

SERIES IX. AUDIOVISUAL MATERIAL (1948-1998) .25 linear feet

This series consists solely of audiotapes and is arranged in two subseries: Events and Interviews. Events includes recordings of events in which Kenyon participated, including her testimony before the Tydings Senate Foreign Relations Committee in response to McCarthy's charges (1950), and her 80th birthday party (1968). Other MATERIAL relating to these events can be found in SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL--Tributes and Testimonials; SERIES VI. ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS--McCarthy Hearings; and SERIES IX. PHOTOGRAPHS. Interviews includes interviews with Kenyon as well as interviews with others about her. Two of the three interviews with Kenyon focus on her work with the United Nations in the late 1940s; the third was conducted by Jacqueline Van Voris in 1971 as part of the Smith College Centennial Study. The interviews about Kenyon are some of the most recent additions to the collection. These came from Louise Wilby Knight (granddaughter of Kenyon's first cousin Katherine Curtis Wilby) who interviewed her mother, Frances Berna Knight, in 1997 and Kenyon's nephew, Tipton Kenyon, in 1998. There is a transcript of the Van Voris interview with Kenyon in SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL--Interviews. Additional MATERIAL relating to Tipton Kenyon and Louise Wilby Knight can be found in SERIES II.--Family.

SERIES X. OVERSIZE MATERIAL (1938-1950) .25 linear feet

This series includes items too large to be contained in regular archival boxes including certificates and a diploma (see also SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL and SERIES IX. PHOTOGRAPHS]; a photograph of a League of Nations function [see also SERIES VI. ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS--League of Nations and SERIES IX. PHOTOGRAPHS]; a framed cartoon by Herblock depicting Kenyon's response to McCarthy [see also SERIES VI. ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS--McCarthy Hearings], and and oversized LP containing an interview with Kenyon about her work with the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women [see also SERIES VI. ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS--United Nations, and SERIES IX. AUDIOVISUAL MATERIAL--Interviews].

SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL (1888-1980)

SERIES II. FAMILY (1850-1998)

SERIES III. CORRESPONDENCE (1917-1971)

SERIES IV. SPEECHES AND WRITINGS (1925-1972)

SERIES V. LEGAL PRACTICE (1936-1969)

SERIES VI. ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS (1923-1971)

SERIES VII. SUBJECTS (1925-1971)

SERIES VIII. PHOTOGRAPHS (1888-1971)