Robert Walker Kenny (August 21, 1901 – July 20, 1976), 21st Attorney General of California (1943-1947), was "a colorful figure in state politics for many years" who in 1946 ran unsuccessfully against Earl Warren for state governor (a race in which Warren won both Republican and Democratic nominations).
During World War II, Kenny was an active proponent of the incarceration of Japanese Americans which the office has since apologized for describing it as a "failure of political leadership" and a racist policy.[1] In 1947, he led the defense of the Hollywood Ten.[2][3]
Background
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.[4] In 1921, Kenny graduated at 18 from Stanford University.[2][3]
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. He then 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 the for the Los Angeles Express. After studying law privately, in 1926 he passed a civil service examination and was admitted to the state bar.[2][3]
California government service
In 1927, Kenny began working in the Los Angeles County counsel's office as "Deputy of the County Counsel."[2][3] In 1929, he joined the state legislature.[3] In 1930, Kenny supported James Rolph Jr., who became California governor, and received an appointment as judge to the Los Angeles Municipal Court, followed by promotion to the Los Angeles Superior Court.[2][3] In 1934, he won an election and became municipal judge for small claims court.[3] He then became a judge in the law and motion court.[3]
At some time in the 1930s, Kenny became a Democrat.[2]
Kenny resigned his judgeship. In 1939, he dissolved a 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.[3]
In 1942, Kenny was elected Attorney General of California, beating Louis H. Burke, and served one term to 1947.[3][4] 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.[1]
In 1946, Kenny sought the Democratic nomination for Governor, but was defeated by Earl Warren. Although Warren was a Republican, California law at that time permitted a candidate to run in both primaries, a practice known as cross-filing. Warren also won the Republican nomination that year and went on to score an easy general election victory.[3][5]
On February 22, 1937, when the NLG formed, Kenny was a founding member.[3] (Note: he was also a member of the NLG's predecessor, the International Juridical Association.[6]) He was elected president of the NLG in 1940 and held the post till 1948.[2][3] During his tenure as president, he became involved in the aftermath of the Zoot Suit Riots.[7][8]
In May 1945, while serving as Attorney General, Kenny accompanied Bartley Crum and Martin Popper to the founding session of the United Nations in San Francisco, where the three men were NLG's "official" consultants to the American delegation at the behest of the U.S. Department of State.[9] In 1946, after losing California's Democratic gubernatorial primary, Kenny returned to private practice.[2]
In 1947, NLG members Charles Katz[9] and Ben Margolis[10][11] asked Kenny to become lead counsel, with Crum as his second,[12] 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.[9][13] 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.[3]
Some believe that Kenny's decision to defend the Hollywood Ten may well have dashed any aspirations he had for career advancement. In her review of Janet Stevenson's 1981 biography of Kenny, The Undiminished Man, Dorothy Gray writes:
Until Bob Kenny chose to oppose the outrages of the McCarthy era, it appeared as though he would achieve a high political office or gain appointment to the California Supreme Court. When, in the late 1940's, he chose to defend those accused of being pro-communist, he sacrificed all hope of high office and became a political untouchable.[14]
Later life
In 1948, Kenny and Robert S. Morris formed a new law partnership. In the 1940s and 1950s, they represented "many people under indictment for questionable activities."[3] Clients included Luisa Moreno Bemis, Guatemalan labor activist, many "unfriendly" witnesses (including the Hollywood Ten) before HUAC in Los Angeles in 1952, as well as musicians before HUAC in 1956. Kenny was a member of the American Committee for the Protection of Foreign Born. Partner Robert S. Morris was a member of the Immigration and Deportation Committee in the Los Angeles chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).[3]
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; Fletcher Bowron won in a recall.[3] 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.[2]
In 1960, Kenny was treasurer of the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee (NCA-HUAC).[15][16] In 1962, Kenny served as counsel of Albert J. Lewis and Steve Roberts of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee before HUAC.[17]
In 1922, Kenny married Sara McCann; she died in 1966.[3]
In the 1930s, Kenny was a "liberal Republican."[2]
Robert Walter Kenny died age 74 on July 20, 1976, at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, California with no survivors.[2][3]
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.[19]
Works
The Law of Freedom in a Platform by Gerrard Winstanley, edited by Robert W. Kenny (1973)[20]
