Robert W. Kenny

Robert Walker Kenny was born on August 21, 1901, in Los Angeles, California. His mother was Minnie Summerfield. His father, Robert Wolfenden Kenny (1863-1914) was a successful banker and civic leader in Los Angeles and Berkeley, California. Kenny's grandfather, George L. Kenny, arrived in San Francisco in the early 1850s with his friends, the brothers A.L. Bancroft and Hubert Howe Bancroft. The three men formed a partnership and established the first bookstore in San Francisco. In 1921, Kenny graduated at 18 from Stanford University. ==Career==

Press In 1921, Kenny joined the Los Angeles Times, where he worked with Chapin Hall, and eventually became a financial editor there. In 1922, he joined United Press news service. Next, he worked for the Chicago Tribune in Paris. In 1923, he returned to Los Angeles and worked for United News. He then opened his own press service with Ted Taylor, called the Los Angeles Press Service, while also working for the Los Angeles Express newspaper. After studying law privately, he passed a civil service examination in 1926 and was admitted to the state bar. Private practice In 1939, Kenny resigned his post as municipal judge, and also dissolved his law partnership with Paul Vallee and Lawrence Beilensen. He set up a new partnership with Morris E. Cohen, which lasted until 1948. Robert O. Curran joined the firm but left to fight in World War II; Robert S. Morris replaced him. Under Kenny in this period, Robert B. Powers worked as "coordinator of law enforcement agencies". While in this capacity, Kenny was responsible for the office's complicity in the racist incarceration of Japanese Americans. His actions have been disavowed as a failure of leadership and unjust by his successors. NLG, Hollywood Ten, and HUAC In 1937, Kenny supported Franklin Delano Roosevelt's battle to "pack" the United States Supreme Court with extra justices via the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937. for the "Unfriendly Nineteen" film industry professionals subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Later, NLG members Martin Popper of Washington and constitutional lawyer Sam Rosenwein of New York also joined the legal team. Only ten of the nineteen wound up testifying before the HUAC. They all refused to answer questions about their Communist Party affiliation, and were cited for contempt of Congress. They became known as the Hollywood Ten. over incumbent Harry S. Truman, who Kenny believed had "betrayed the principles of the Democratic Party." He served as chairman of the Progressive Citizens of America and "Democrats for Wallace." In 1950, Kenny ran for California state senator against Glenn Anderson and Jack Tenney for the Democratic nomination; Tenney won. The same year, he ran for Los Angeles mayor in a recall election; Fletcher Bowron won. In 1957, he was one of the lawyers who helped 23 Hollywood screenwriters and actors win a Supreme Court review of their challenge of the Hollywood blacklist. In 1960, Kenny was treasurer of the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee (NCA-HUAC). {{cite book {{cite web {{cite book In 1963, the Congressional Record re-recorded information from October 26, 1955, that "public records, files, and publications of this committee" (HUAC) showed Kenny "not necessarily a Communist, a Communist sympathizer, or a fellow traveller" but noted nevertheless that he was affiliated with the American Youth for Democracy, Civil Rights Congress, Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, and California Labor School. {{cite book ==Personal life and death==

In 1922, Kenny married Sara McCann; she died in 1966. Robert Walter Kenny died at age 74 on July 20, 1976, at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, California. ==Legacy==

In 2012, the National Lawyers Guild remembered Kenny as follows: That the Guild survived the splits in the late '30s and repression of the '50s is primarily a testament to the loyalty, bravery and commitment to principle of two allied but disparate groups. One was made up of communist and socialist activists... The other was a group of dedicated civil libertarians who were unwilling to compromise their principles to curry favor with either the Roosevelt Administration or the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations. Nor would they refuse to work with Communists. But these lawyers were not communists, and steered the Guild in an independent, radical direction. Robert W Kenny, a California State Senator who became President of the Guild in 1940 at a moment of grave internal crisis, disregarding the risks to his political future, and remaining President for eight important years, was a key member of this group. {{cite journal ==Works==

• The Law of Freedom in a Platform by Gerrard Winstanley, edited by Robert W. Kenny (1973) {{cite book ==See also==