Kenyon, Dorothy (1888–1972)

American lawyer, feminist, judge, and civil libertarian. Born on February 17, 1888, in New York City; died on February 11, 1972 (some sources erroneously cite February 12), in New York City; daughter of William Houston Kenyon, a lawyer, and Maria Wellington (Stanwood) Kenyon; educated at Horace Mann High School in New York City; graduated from Smith College, A.B. in economics, 1908; graduated from New York University Law School, 1917.

Dorothy Kenyon was born on February 17, 1888, and grew up with her two younger brothers on Manhattan's Upper West Side and at a summer house in Connecticut; her father was a patent lawyer, and her mother a descendant of Massachusetts Bay colonists. Kenyon graduated from high school in 1904 and from Smith College in 1908 with a degree in economics and history. After witnessing social injustices during a trip to Mexico, she entered law school, graduating and passing the New York Bar in 1917. Kenyon rejected the opportunity to join her brothers at their father's law firm and, other than a partnership in the 1930s with Dorothy Straus and a few short stints at other firms, spent the majority of her 54-year career in independent practice. In 1937, she was one of the first women admitted to the New York City Bar Association.

Dorothy Kenyon was an ardent advocate of liberal causes. In the 1920s and 1930s, she supported the suffragist and birth-control movements, and during the Depression opposed discrimination of married women workers (whom many believed should be forced to quit their jobs so that unemployed men could be hired instead). From 1930 until her death, she sat on the national board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union, and she was one of the few who opposed the dismissal of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn , a member of the Communist Party, in 1940. Active in the liberal wing of New York City politics in the 1930s as well as later, Kenyon served on committees for the American Labor Party, worked against the Tammany Hall political machine, and was appointed first deputy commissioner of licenses in 1936 and a municipal court judge in 1939, both by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. She served on several public commissions, including ones that dealt with issues of relief, minimum wage, public housing, and court procedures for women, as well as being a founder and director of numerous consumer corporations and serving as legal counsel for the Cooperative League of the United States. In 1938, Kenyon was appointed by the council of the League of Nations to be one of seven jurists forming a committee to study the legal status of women throughout the world. During World War II, she supported the cause of women physicians who sought military commissions. She was also the U.S. delegate to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women from 1946 to 1950, and in those years was granted four honorary degrees.

Kenyon's career, like that of so many others, was damaged when she was accused by Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1950 of membership in Communist-front organizations. She became the first person to appear before the investigators on the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, strongly denying either membership in the Communist Party, being a fifth-columnist, or disloyalty to her country, while concurring that she had worked with liberal organizations. Despite the support Kenyon received from the liberal press and many respected public figures, McCarthy's accusation marked the end of her public appointments. She continued practicing law, and from the 1950s became involved in challenging the country's draconian abortion laws. She did not receive another honorary degree for nearly two decades.

During the 1960s, Kenyon was active in both the feminist movement and the civil-rights movement. She promoted integration of New York City public schools, prepared briefs for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and, after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, marched with sanitation workers. She also joined in feminist marches and used her position on the ACLU board of directors to push that institution to fight for women's rights. Initially perceiving the Equal Rights Amendment as a menace to protective legislation, Kenyon opposed it until her disappointment over the Supreme Court's lack of commitment in striking down legal differentiations based on sex caused her to join the pro-ERA side in 1970. Before her death from cancer in New York City on February 11, 1972, Dorothy Kenyon also participated in the antiwar movement, helped to organize a women's coalition seeking to divert federal money from the defense budget to social purposes, and was instrumental in establishing the first legal services for the poor on the Lower West Side of Manhattan.

sources:

Sicherman, Barbara, and Carol Hurd Green, eds. Notable American Women: The Modern Period. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980.

Karina L. Kerr , M.A., Ypsilanti, Michigan