Dorothy Kenyon

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Dorothy Kenyon (born February 17, 1888 in New York ; † February 12, 1972 ibid) was a New York lawyer , judge , feminist and political activist for civil rights . She was a delegate to the first United Nations Commission on the Status of Women , and in the 1950s she was persecuted by the McCarthy era .

Youth and education

Kenyon was born in New York in 1888, the daughter of Maria Wellington Stanwood and William Houston Kenyon, a patent attorney. She grew up on the Upper West Side of New York and the family spent the summers in Lakeville, Connecticut . In 1904 she left the Horace Mann School and attended Smith College , where she studied economics and history . At Smith College she was accepted into the Phi Beta Kappa Academic Honor Society in 1908 . After graduation, she spent a year in Mexico , where she experienced poverty and injustice up close. After this experience, she decided to get involved in social issues. In 1917 she completed her legal education at the School of Law at New York University .

Professional activity and socio-political work

In her first professional activity, as a member of a research group of lawyers, she advised the American delegates at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 . In her research, Kenyon examined the conditions in the world of work in times of war and prepared economic data for the conference. She then worked briefly as a legal assistant and for the US government in Washington, DC From 1919 to 1925, Kenyon was employed by Pitkin Rosenson and Henderson in New York. In 1934 she was appointed a member of the Unemployed Tax Relief Council of the New York City Comptroller . From 1935 to 1937 she was New York's First Deputy Commissioner of License .

In 1930 Kenyon founded the law firm Straus and Kenyon with Dorothy Straus , which focused on women's rights. The collaboration ended in 1939 when Kenyon became a judge at the Municipal Court , where she became known as "Judge Kenyon".

Dorothy Kenyon was involved in a wide variety of social problem areas. In the 1920s, she supported the introduction of birth control . In 1920 she and others founded Consumers Cooperative Services , which operated a chain of cooperatively organized cafeterias in New York. She saw herself as a feminist and took on roles and offices in many different women's rights organizations . In 1936 she became chairman of a committee that examined the treatment of women in court proceedings. In this role, she called for a more impartial approach to prostitutes in court and a tougher attitude towards pimps.

Kenyon was a charismatic speaker and often traveled across the United States to give lectures on civil liberties, the rights and equality of men and women.

Tasks in international organizations

Dorothy Kenyon worked from 1938 to 1943 for the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation , the predecessor organization of UNESCO .

From 1946 to 1950 she was a founding member of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women and worked on the formulation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . During this period she lamented the little role women played in the United States' system of government.

The McCarthy era

Kenyon was also targeted during the McCarthy era persecution. She called Joseph McCarthy's March 8, 1950 allegations of alleged links to 28 communist organizations " outright lies " and called McCarthy a " coward who hides under the guise of immunity from Congress ." She emphasized that she was neither at that time nor before was she a supporter, member or sympathizer of an organization that she knew or suspected was controlled or controlled by communists. The following day, the New York Times published an editorial in support of Kenyon, after which McCarthy stated that he had little interest in her case. A subcommittee of the U.S. Senate dismissed the lawsuit against her on July 17, 1950.

In the course of her dispute with McCarthy, Kenyon received widespread support from the press and from eminent figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt . Although she had been acquitted of all allegations, her reputation was damaged to the point that she was no longer given any public office.

Work for civil rights

During the 1950s and 1960s, Kenyon drafted legal briefs for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and worked for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). She urged the ACLU to position itself against sexist regulations and institutions. Kenyon was the only woman on the ACLU board of directors for many years. She joined the movement for the Equal Rights Amendment and worked with the much younger feminists of the Women's Liberation Movement . She took part in the Women's Strike Day for Equality (August 26, 1970) and supported the campaign to legalize abortion .

In 1966 Dorothy Kenyon and her lawyer colleague Pauli Murray were successful in a case (" White v. Crook ") before the Federal Court of Appeal in New Orleans , which ruled that women have the same rights as men to belong to a court. When the attorney and later judge at the Supreme Court of the United States Ruth Bader Ginsburg her comment on the case “ Reed v. Reed “, in which the Supreme Court in 1971 extended the 14th amendment to the constitution ( citizenship law ) for the first time to include women, she named Murray and Kenyon - in recognition of their services - as co-authors.

Kenyon was involved in various contexts in President Johnson's war on poverty and at the age of 80 she was still working tirelessly and almost without support to set up legal advice for the poor on the Lower West Side.

Private life

Throughout her life, she had long and intense romantic relationships with various men (Walcott Pitkin, Elihu Root Jr., and LV Pulsifer). Because of her great need for independence, she decided not to marry.

When Kenyon was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 1969 , she hid the severity of her illness from most people and refused to reduce or even quit her legal or political work. She worked as a lawyer until her death on February 12, 1972, shortly before her 84th birthday.

further reading

  • Edited by Kerber, Linda K., Skla, Kathryn Kish and Kessler-Harris, Alice: US History As Women's History: New Feminist Essays . The University of North Carolina Press, 1995, ISBN 0-8078-4495-0 .
  • Lawrence N. Strout: Covering McCarthyism: How the Christian Science Monitor Handled Joseph R. McCarthy, 1950-1954 . Greenwood Press, 1999, ISBN 0-313-31091-2 .
  • Susan M. Hartmann: The Other Feminists: Activists in the Liberal Establishment . Yale University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-300-07464-6 .
  • Edited by James, Edward T., James, Janet Wilson and Boyer, Paul: Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary . Belknap Press, 1974, ISBN 0-674-62734-2 .

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Dorothy Kenyon Papers . In: Sophia Smith Collection . Smith College. 1999. Retrieved August 12, 2011.
  2. ↑ a b Judge Dorothy Kenyon Is Dead; Champion of Social Reform, 83 . In: The New York Times , February 14, 1972. 
  3. ↑ a b Linda K. Kerber: Judge Ginsburg's Gift . In: The Washington Post . HighBeam Research. August 1, 1993. Archived from the original on October 11, 2013. Retrieved January 14, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Kenyon, Dorothy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer and women's rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH February 17, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH new York
DATE OF DEATH February 12, 1972
Place of death new York