March 14, 1950 — US Senate Subcommittee on the Investigation of Loyalty of State Department Employees, Washington DC

 

My name is Dorothy Kenyon. I live at No. 133 West Twenty-first Street, New York City. I am a practicing lawyer with offices located at No. 50 Broadway, New York City.

When I was informed of the accusations that were made against me before this sub committee last week, I did explode. Doubtless my indignation led me to make some impulsive remarks in unparliamentary language. Reflection, and a recollection refreshed by such investigation as I could make in the interim, now permits a much more dispassionate approach. However, nothing can diminish the deep resentment I feel that such outrageous charges should be publicized before this subcommittee and broadcast over the entire Nation without any notice or warning to me.

My answer to these charges is short, simple, and direct. I am not, and never have been, a Communist. I am not, and never have been a fellow traveler. I am not, and never have been, a supporter of, a member of, or a sympathizer with any organization known to me to be, or suspected by me of being, controlled or dominated by Communists. As emphatically and unreservedly as possible, I deny any connection of any kind or character with communism or its adherents. If this leaves anything unsaid to indicate my total and complete detestation of that political philosophy, it is only because it is impossible for me to express my sentiments. I mean my denial to be all inclusive.

So absolute a negation of the charges should be supplemented with an equally positive, but brief, affirmation of what I am and have been.

I received my bachelor of arts degree from Smith College and my law degree (doctor juris) from New York University Law School. I am a member of Phi Beta Kappa and have been for several years a senator of the united chapters of Phi Beta Kappa.

I come of a family of lawyers, my father having been a patent lawyer in New York City where my brothers and a cousin now practice under the firm name of Kenyon & Kenyon. My father’s cousin, William S. Kenyon, was for many years a member of the United States Senate and later a Federal judge in Iowa.

I was admitted to the bar in 1917 and have practiced law continually ever since except during certain periods when I held public office. Mine is a general practice. I am a member of the Bar Association of the City of New York, the New York County Lawyers’ Association, the New York State Bar Association, the American Bar Association, the National Women Lawyers’ Association, the American Society of International Law, the American Branch of the International Law Association, and several others.

I have held public office three times, first from June 1, 1936, to December 31, 1937, as deputy commissioner of licenses by appointment of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, second from January 1, 1939, to December 31, 1939, as municipal court judge in New York City, and by appointment of Mayor LaGuardia, and third, from January 1, 1947, to December 31, 1949, as United States delegate to the Commission on the Status of Women of the United Nations, by appointment of President Truman, ratified and confirmed by the Senate. I was also appointment in January 1938, by the League of Nations, as one of a commission of seven jurists (of whom I was the only American) to study the legal status of women throughout the world. This commission continued to operate until the war made further communication between the members impossible. I have also served on a number of governmentally appointed commissions and committees dealing with such subjects as the regulation of employment agencies, minimum-wage legislation, consumer cooperative corporations, problems growing out of the wartime employment of women, etc. I have also done a small amount of labor arbitration.

My interest in good government led me early into the ranks of the League of Women Voters, of which I have been a member for almost 30 years and which I have served in many capacities and ofices. It also led me into the Citizens Union of New York, of which executive committee have been a member for almost 20 years. When the American Labor Party was formed in New York I was one of its earliest members but I left it after our efforts to save it from Communist domination finally failed. I am now an enrolled Democrat. I am also a member of Americans for Democratic Action.

My interest in civil liberties led m e equally early into the ranks of the American Civil Liberties Union ,of which I have been a member of the board for almost 20 years. In that connection I have fought on many civil liberties issues and have participated in many briefs amicus in defense of the Bill of Rights.

My interest in education, in labor problems and in the problems of women made me an early member of the American Association of University Women, of which I am now second vice president. I am also a member of the National Board of the YWCA, a director of the Women’s City Club of New York, the Association for the Aid of Crippled Children, and the Committee of Women in World Affairs. I was also for many years on the board of the Consumers’ League of New York and was for a time its president. I am also a member of numerous other women’s organizations.

I am, and always have been an independent, liberal Democrat, devoted to and actively working for such causes as the improvement of the living and working conditions of labor and the preservation of civil liberties. To the latter cause especially I have given much time and attention and have made speeches on that subject for many years in various parts of the country. At times I have espoused unpopular causes in that connection. and have probably made some enemies of those who disagreed with my views.

I am, and always have been, an ardent, outspoken American citizen, yielding to no one in my admiration of the great privileges this country offers to all its sons and daughters and determined to do all I can to maintain those privileges inviolate forever. I am, and always have been, unalterably opposed to anyone who advocates the overthrow of our Government by force or violence or who otherwise engages in subversive activities or entertains subversive ideas.

I am not content to rely on these general denials and observations, and therefore proceed to deal more specifically with the charges against me. In substance, as I understand it, it is claimed that it can be established by documentary proof that I have been at some time a member of 21 or more Communist-front organizations and therefore stand convicted under the doctrine of guilt by association.

Thus far I have not been confronted with this documentary proof and as I am totally unaware of the contents of most of the documents, I am in no position to make any categorical denials or assertions regarding such statements as they may contain. Here and now, however, I can and do state, with the absolute confidence borne of my personal and positive knowledge, that there does not exist and never existed any genuine document that proves or even tends to prove that I have ever knowingly joined or sponsored or participated in the activities of any organization known to me to be even slightly subversive.

I do not even know the names of all the 23 or more Communist-front organizations I am supposed to have joined. I have taken the list of organizations from the published reports in the press. The names may not be quite accurate and the list is apparently incomplete. It was impossible for me to identify some of the names and events described in those charges. I have done the best I could, however, in the brief time since hearing of them and have searched my files, and my own memory in respect to each one. If any further organizations are alluded to to day I shall ask the committee’s indulgence for time to investigate and make my replies thereon at a later date.

First, let me deny acquaintance with practically every one of the persons mentioned in the charges as being “familiar company” to me, “collaborator,” or “fellow Red.” I do not know and have never to my knowledge laid eyes on Bernhard J. Stern, Albert Maltz, Anna Louise Strong, William Gropper, Langston Hughes, Hewlett Johnson, Ben Gold, Lee Pressmen, Whittaker Chambers, Howard Fast, Saul Mills,Ella Winter,John Howard Lawson, Henry H. Collins, Rockwell Kent, Lewis Merrill, Mervyn Rathborne, Dirk J. Struick, Harry Bridges, Paul P. Crosbie, Benjamin J. Davis, Charles Krumbein, Morris V. Schappes, Simon W. Gerson, Louis Weinstock, Irving Potash, Helen Selden, or Josephine Herbst. I once heard Paul Robeson sing at a concert. Harry F. Ward was, in the thirties (before its Communist purge), chairman of the board of the American Civil Liberties Union, and I, of course, knew him there. Corliss Lamont is still on the board. I met Carol King years ago before she went “left,” but I have seen heard anything of her in many years. Arthur Kallet’s name I vaguely remember, as I vaguely remember Consumer’s Union, but he and it date back in my memory at least 15 years, and if he were a Communist then I did not know it.

I may be pardoned for putting the other names mentioned in a different category. They are Mrs. Dean Acheson, Stanley Isaacs, Phi;ip Jessup, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. I am prodout do say I have had a slight acquaintance with them all.

To repeat, the rest are unknown to me, except as above mentioned, adn the innuendoes as to my relationship with them absolutely false.

Now for the organizations themselves.

League of Women Shoppers: I begin with the League of Women Shoppers because my connection with that organization, which was set up to investigate labor disputes, is ancient history, and it was also very short-lived. Evelyn Preston Baldwin, wife of Rager Baldwin, and a close friend of mine, became its president at its founding in 1935 or thereabouts. I was a sponsor. We both withdrew a year of so later. I remember that I did so because I did not approve of the way the investigations were being handled. If it was Communist then, neither of us knew it.

Political Prisoners’ Ball Fund Committee: The Political Prisoners’ Ball Fund Committee is also ancient history.

I have no documentation on this organization in my files, but I remember that I served as sponsor for a short time at the request of Roger Baldwin. Mr. Baldwin, who was a trustee of the fund, tells me that he and others set it up about 1925 to write bail in a great variety of worthy cases, some may possible have involve Communists but most of them definitely did not. It was liquidated about 1934. He regarded it as wholly non-partisan and non-Communist. It is significant that it s apparently not on any subversive list. It is described in the charges merely as subsidiary to the International Labor Defense, which is on the subversive list. The connection between them is not stated.

Consumer’s Union: The Consumer’s Union is also ancient history. I have never represented Consumer’s Union. I had acted as attorney for Consumer’s Research in its incorporation and for several years thereafter prior to 1935, but I never acted for Consumer’s Union. Consumer’s Union came into existence, as I recall it, following a strike and split-up of the business into two organizations. They both test merchandise and give advice as to good buys. This is where I had my short acquaintance with Arthur Kallet. He was with Consumer’s Research and tater with Consumer’s Union.

Conference on Pan-American Democracy: The Conference on Pan-American Democracy comes next. I find a letterhead in my file, listing me as a sponsor of this organization, dated March 4, 1939, along with Senator Paul A. Douglas, John Haynes Holmes, Quincy Howe, Stanley Isaacs, and Dr. Ralph W. Sockman, all friends of mine. I remember almost nothing about this organization, except that I think I may have spoken before it in 1938 or thereabouts. I have never heard of it since. I certainly had no idea at that time that it was Communist, and I am sure my other sponsor friends had no such idea, either.

National Council of American-Soviet Friendship: Now for the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship. I was never a member of this organization, but I became a sponsor of it (along with many distinguished people) at the height of the war effort (in 1943, I think it was), when the Russians were making their stand before Stalingrad and many of us believed that friendship with the people of Russia was both possible and good. I withdrew my sponsorship some 3 years later, when I had become convinced that the organization was no longer being used for the purposes state in its title. Not long ago a friend told me that my name had not been removed from the sponsor’s list as I had requested, and I wrote demanding its removal. I quote that letter:

“GENTLEMEN: I am advised that you are still carrying my name on your letterhead as a sponsor of your organization.

I became a sponsor in 1943 or 1944, when the Germans were at the gates of Stalingrad and the United States was deepen admiration of the great courage of the Russian people. Antying which looked toward genuine friendship between the peoples of our two countries was highly desirable. Since then, however your policy, as I have had occasion to observe it in the press, has had less and less to do with the development of genuine friendship between the peoples of our two countries and more and more to do with mere apologetics for the Russian Governmentt, which you have supported no less consistently than you have attacked the United States. This is no way to build friendship, and it makes a mockery of your name and alleged purposes. My sponsorship of the Council as a genuine organ of friendship between the peoples has therefore long since lapsed.

I have previously requested you to remove my name from your list of sponsors and I must now insist that you do so. 

Sincerely yours.

I assume that my name has been removed by now, although I have no way of being sure. I have no apologies whoever for sponsoring this organization at the time I did and under those circumstances.s

As indicative of the standing it had, it is significant that President Roosevelt himself sent a message of greeting to the Council at its meeting on November 16, 1944, reading as follows:

“I am grateful to you and all those who are celebrating American-Soviet Friendship Day for the words of support and confidence I have received. There is no better tribute we can hold out to our Allies than to continue working one ver-growing accord to establish a peace that will endure. The Dumbarton Oaks Conference was a step in this direction. Other steps will be taken. In line with this objective, such meetings as you are holding in Madison Square garden and in other great centers throughout the United States are of tremendous assistance and value.”

And that President Truman followed it up by another greeting on November 14, 1945, reading as follows:

The President has asked me to extend to you eery good wish for the success of the meeting and to assure you of his interest in all efforts to continue the good relations between this country and the Soviet Union.

As for the Red dean of Canterbury, I certainly never welcomed him at Madison Square Garden nor anywhere else. I surmise that the fact that my name remained on the sponsor list longer that it should have is the e explanation of this incident.

American Russian Institute: I have no recollection of sponsoring the dinner in question but, since it was given in honor of President Roosevelt, it would not seem inappropriate had I done so.

American Layers’ Committee on American Relations with Spain: Now for the group connected with Spain. This committee was apparently working early in 1939 to lift the embargo on Spain, which was defeated by the combined efforts of revolutionary forces with the community plus Hitler and Mussolini. This organization is not only subversive list that I can find.

Washington Committee To Lift the Spanish Embargo: As for the Washington committee I can find nothing on this in my files.

Veterans of Abraham Lincoln Brigade: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade probably belongs in here too. I have no recollection or documentation for this whatever. Furthermore, if the petition which they say I signed really contained a charge that war hysteria was being whipped up by the Roosevelt administration it is inconceivable that I could have signed it, since I myself was then passionately pro ally and in process of trying to force our Government into greater and greater activity in their behalf rather than less.

American Committee for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom: I have no recollection of documentation in respect to signing a petition in my files. I do have correspondence, however, showing that in 1940 I accepted membership on a citizen’s committee to promote free public education. The letterhead lists many distinguished college presidents and professors, including Miss Park, former president of Bryn Mawr and Prof. Harold Urey. this organization is not on the Attorney General’s list.

Greater New York Emergency Conference on Inalienable Rights: I can find nothing on this in my files but I find a press clipping reporting a meeting held in New York February 15, 1940, at which Newbold Morris and Mary Woolley, former president of Mount Holyoke Collect, were listed as speakers.

Advisory Board of Film Audiences for Democracy and Advisory Board of Films for Democracy: I can find nothing on either of these organizations in my files. I may possibly have made a speech before them. Neither of them are on any subversive list that I can find.

Shappes Defense Committee.

Daily Worker Letter on Simon W. Gerson.

American Committee for Anti-Nazi Literature.

Advisory Committee of the Citizen’s Committee To Aid Striking Seamen.

Milk Consumer’s Protective Committee: I can find nothing on any of these matters in my files and have no memory of them except a vague recollection of the Gerson and Schappes controversies. If I participate in either of them in any way, I have completely forgotten about it, and I am certain that I never approved or endorsed Communist activities in those or any other matters.

Congress of American Women: This is one organization I know something about. It is the American affiliate of the Women’s International Democratic Federation, a wholly Moscow-controlled body over which I have been battling with Mme. Popova, of the U.S.S.R. at the United Nations for all the years since the creation of the Commission on the Status of Women. To charge me with membership in this organization is nothing short of fantastic.

This completes the roster of specific charges.

One general charge remains, my “constant adherence to the . . . party line,” as evidenced by this alleged multiplicity of associations (actually boiled down to a handful and most of them before 1940). Well, how about it? Is this all I have done? Is this the whole of my life? Emphatically no. I have done many other things, some of them strangely inconsistent with the party line, some of them in flat contradiction to it. Let’s look at the record in the round and not just a distorted fragment.

In the early years of my life I knew very little and cared less about Communists. They were an utterly negligible factor in my life. During this thirties, however, as world tension increased, they began showing their hand, and by the end of that period I, like others, had come to now and loathe their philosophy. The signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact in October 1939 suddenly made the issues startlingly clear. I voices those issues in a letter I wrote to Alex Rose, secretary of the American Labor Party, under date of October 10, 1939, as a statement for him to use in conjunction with my candidacy as judge of the municipal court:

I regard with horror and loathing the Hitler-Stalin pact. I agree with you that any fusing of the brown and red dictatorships is a treacherous blow to world civilization, etc.

Events moved so quickly after that, by February 1940 we had been forced to form a liberal and labor committee, of which I was a member, to safeguard the American Labor Party and to fight the Communist attempt to capture it. At the same time the American Civil Liberties Union found it necessary to purge from its own board all nonbelievers in civil liberties. This action barred from its governing councils anyone “who is a member of any political organization which supports totalitarian dictatorship in any country, or who by his public declarations indicates his support of such a principle.” Within this category we include organizations in the United States supporting the totalitarian governments of the Soviet Union and of the Fascist and Nazi countries (such as the Communist Party and the German-American Bund, and others), as well as native organizations with obvious antidemocratic objectives and practices. Needless to say, I was not one of thos purged, and I am still a member of that board.

The Communist Party line in 1940-41 was antiwar, anti-French, and anti-British. But it was not my line. Being on the contrary passionately pro-French and pro-British I became increasingly anxious to aid them as the months passed by, first by all means short of war and later by war itself if need be.

I was one of the original members of the so-called William Allen White Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. William Allen White in a telegram invited me to join, saying:

Here is a life-and-death struggle for every principle we cherish in America, for freedom of speech, of religion, of the ballot, and of every freedom that upholds the dignity of the human spirit. Here all the rights that the common man has fought for during thousand years are menaced. Terrible as it may seem, the people of our country cannot avoid the consequences of Hitler’s victory or of those who are or may be allied with him. A totalitarian victory would wipe out hope for a just and lasting peace.

I favored giving Great Britain over-age destroyers. I favored lend lease, selective service, etc. I made many speeches during that period extolling freedom, urging aid to the allies, and criticizing the isolationists and the Communists alike for their opposition.

On May 26, 1941 (a month before Hitler attacked Russia) I joined with other members of that committee in an open letter to the President of the United States, in effect inviting him to declare war on the dictators. It read in part:

We cannot close our eyes to the wholesale murder of liberty. . . . The dictators have extended their world war and world revolution from continent to continent. . . . The challenge is inescapable. We know that strong action, even armed action, will be required of us.

This was signed, among many others, by Mrs. J. Borden Harriman and Ambassador Lewis W. Douglas.

This history of my efforts during the crucial years of 1940-1941 hardly needs any gloss but it should give pause to those who dare to call me a Communist.

After Russia had been attacked we all changed our viewpoint slightly and many of us made earnest efforts to be friends with our new allies. I do not apologize for that impulse or effort. I thing it was right and good.

However we failed. When the war ended the cold war began and it is intensifying. I have been in the thick of it. Confronted with Madame Popover of the U.S.S.R. at the United Nations I have had a fight on my hands from the outset. At the first meeting of our Commission on the Status of Women held in February 1947, she sought preferential treatment for her particular pet organization, the Womeon’s International Democratic Federation (of which the Congress of American women is the United States affiliate). I battled her on eight different occasions during that first meeting on that one issue alone, practically single-handed, since some of the other delegates did not yet know what it was all about. They know now, though. The reports and summary records of the Commission’s proceedings tell the tale.

The struggle went on at subsequent Commission meetings. It reached its peak at Beirut, Lebanon, last spring when after bitter debate over many things, including equal pay for equal work, I finally demanded of Madame Popover whether women received equal pay for equal work in the Soviet slave labor camps.

The issue was always slavery versus freedom. I raised the point over and over again in writings, speeches, at meetings, even over the Voice of America.

Eventually Moscow answered back. Maria Sharikova, assistant chairwoman of the Moscow Soviet on the Rights of Women, is reported on January 5, 1949, to have said:

Dorothy Kenyon, in endeavoring to conceal her reactionary stand has engaged in slander the Soviet people, in particular Soviet women. In a radio broadcast over the Voice of America, she talks a lot of irresponsible drivel attempting to deny the political, economic, and social equality enjoyed by the women of the U.S.S.R. at the same time painting a glowing picture of the position of women in Britain and the United States, when she knows full well what their position really is. I am shocked at this shameful downright lie, completely unsupported by the tiniest fact. As it happens, Dorothy Kenyon could not quote facts for that would at once disprove her assertions.

“Dorothy Kenyon has engaged in slandering the freest women on earth, the women of the U.S.S.R. However, as any of the thousands of visitors to the U.S. S. R. can witness, the slander indulged in by Dorothy Kenyon can hoodwink no one.

This is my defense. What does it add up to? With all the mistakes and errors of judgment which the best of us can and do commit only too frequently, I submit that the record proves without question that I am a lover of democracy, of individual freedom and of human rights for everybody, a battler, perhaps a little too much of a battler sometimes, for the rights of the little fellow, the underdog, who tallow who gets forgotten or frightened or shunned because of unpopular views but who is a human being just the same and entitled to be treated like one. The converse of these things — dictatorship, cruelty, oppression, and slavery are to me intolerable. I cannot live in their air, I must fight back. This is not perhaps a very wise or prudent way to live but it is my way. It has got me into hot water before an probably will again. But my faith in people and my impulse to fight for them is my religion and it is the light by which I life. I also believe that it is America. There is not a Communist bone in my body.

This is a matter of grave consequence to me. Literally overnight, whatever personal and professional reputation and standing I may have acquired after many years in private practice and she in public office, have been seriously jeopardized, if not destroyed by the widespread dissemination of charges of communistic leanings n proclivities that are utterly false. The truth may never catch up with the lie, but insofar as I can, I desire to regain as much of what I have lost as possible and I have faith that this subcommittee will see that justice is done. Of course, I am more than willing to attempt to ands we any questions the members of this subcommittee, or anyone permitted by the subcommittee, may care to ask. I conclude with an expression of my appreciation of the opportunity and privilege afforded me so promptly, to answer these charges at this public hearing.

 

 

Source: Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 81st Congress, 2nd Sess., Vol. 96, Part 3 (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1950), pp. 3594-3596.