Robert Walker Kenny Papers, 1920-1947

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Summary

Creators:
Kenny, Robert Walker, 1901-
Abstract:
Chiefly his papers as Attorney General of California, 1942-1946; some material pertaining to his offices and judgeships, Los Angeles; State Senatorship; Prohibition repeal; legal problems of World War II, including Japanese evacuation and war industry reconversion; control of venereal diseases; U.S.-Mexican water negotiations; Indian claims; National and International Lawyers Guilds; minority groups and civil rights; United Nations Conference, San Francisco, 1945; the Nuremberg trials; support of Henry A. Wallace as Presidential candidate; private law practice.
Extent:
40 linear feet Number of containers: 41 boxes, 16 cartons, 5 oversize boxes
Language:
English and English
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Robert Walker Kenny papers, BANC MSS C-B 510, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Background

Scope and content:

The collection contains a small amount of correspondence and printed material dating beyond the end of Kenny's term as Attorney General. Much of this material deals with his activity in 1947 to promote Henry Wallace as an independent candidate for the Presidency. (Carton 13, Misc. Political Campaign, 1947)

The correspondence, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, speeches, press releases, personal miscellany and political campaign material reflect in varying degrees all phases of Kenny's professional and political career. The great bulk of the collection, however, deals with his service as Attorney General, State of California, from January 1943 to December 1946, and in the same period, his activities as an executive in various private and public organizations. A considerable amount of the letters received and sent by Kenny as Attorney General are concerned with the routine responsibilities and administrative operations of his office, including those of his principal subordinates. Among such material are requests for employment and for letters of recommendation, routine correspondence relating to meetings, conferences, speaking engagements and travel, acknowledgement of receipt of minutes of meetings and reports, formal and informal opinions regarding proposed and enacted legislation prepared by deputies of the Attorney General's Office.

All political campaigns in which Kenny was an active participant are represented in varying degrees in the collection. These include: the "wet" campaign of the "Crusaders" in 1932; the Los Angeles mayoralty contest of 1933, as an adherent of the "Liberal League;" Kenny's campaign in 1934 to serve as Superior Court judge; Culbert Olson's gubernatorial campaign and Kenny's contest for State Senate in 1938; campaign for Attorney General in 1942; and Kenny's unsuccessful race for Governor against Earl Warren in 1946.

The collection contains correspondence reflecting other official appointive posts held by Kenny while Attorney General. These include: Chairman, California Commission on Interstate Cooperation; member, Advisory Pardon Board and Director, Los Angeles County Law Library. At the same time he occupied the office of President, National Lawyers Guild, and for two years he served as President, California Housing and Planning Association.

The collection also contains some correspondence relating to Kenny's private law practice and other business connections. With respect to the former, there is correspondence by Kenny as a member of the firm of Vallee, Beilenson and Kenny from 1939 to 1940, and later correspondence relating to his law partnership with Morris E. Cohn. Kenny's private business associations included his serving on the boards of directors of the Citizens' National Bank, Oceanic Oil Company and the Tivoli Beer Company.

Copies of letters sent by subordinate officials and employees of Kenny's office are interfiled in proper chronological sequence with letters originating with Kenny. Letters and memoranda by such individuals addressed to Kenny are filed alphabetically by name of the writer in Interoffice Memoranda (Boxes 40 and 41).

The Kenny collection was given to the Bancroft Library by Robert W. Kenny in December 1952.

Additional Kenny papers are at UCLA. Janet Stevenson tapes of Kenny are deposited with her papers at the University of Oregon.

Biographical / historical:

Robert Walker Kenny was born in Los Angeles, California, on August 21, 1901. His father was Robert W. Kenny, Sr., (1863-1914) a prominent banker and civic leader in Los Angeles and Berkeley, California. The elder Kenny's father, George Kenny, arrived in San Francisco in the early 1850s with his brothers-in-law A. L. Bancroft and Hubert Howe Bancroft. The three men formed a partnership and established the first bookstore in San Francisco. R. W. Kenny's maternal grandfather, George Carleton, was a pioneer orange grower in Riverside County, California, and a leader in the Methodist Church in Southern California.

Kenny was educated at Harvard Military Academy and the University of Southern California Preparatory School, both in Los Angeles. He received his A.B. degree from Stanford University in 1921. He later studied law at the University of Southern California and was admitted to the State of California bar in 1926.

From 1921 to 1927 Kenny worked as a newspaper reporter in the United States and Europe for various publication and press services, including the United Press in San Francisco, Los Angeles and London, the Chicago Tribunein Paris, France, and for the following Los Angeles newspapers: Los Angeles Evening Herald, Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Examiner.

After his admittance to the Bar in 1926, Kenny was appointed in 1927 on the basis of a competitive civil service examination, to the position of Deputy Counsel for Los Angeles County in which capacity he served until 1931. While Deputy County Counsel, Kenny was assigned to attend sessions of the California Legislature at Sacramento under the auspices of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce to handle bills affecting Los Angeles County.

After working actively in the 1930 campaign for the election of James Rolph, Republican, as Governor, Kenny was appointed by Rolph to the Municipal Court of Los Angeles on September 14, 1931, and in 1932 he was elevated to the Superior Court.

At this stage of his career Kenny considered himself a "liberal" Republican and in this role worked actively as a "wet" for the repeal of the 18th Amendment in 1932 under the banner of the Crusaders, a Los Angeles organization dedicated to the repeal of the Prohibition Amendment. Kenny's anti-Prohibition attitudes also found expression in his work with the Liberal League, another Los Angeles non-partisan political organization which, in addition to its "wet" orientation vigorously sought to defeat the incumbent Los Angeles mayor, John C. Porter. In the hotly contested mayoralty election of 1933 Kenny worked with the Liberal League on behalf of candidate Frank L. Shaw who defeated Porter decisively.

In 1934 Kenny sought his first elective office, his position on the Superior Court bench to which he had been appointed originally by Governor Rolph. In this campaign Kenny received support from broad segments of the area and won easily.

In 1938 Kenny ran as a Democrat for the State Senate. He won both the Democratic and Republican nominations in the primary election and went on to defeat his Progressive Party opponent in the general election by an overwhelming margin. In the same campaign he served as Chairman of the State Democratic Central Finance Committee for the election of Culbert L. Olson to the office of Governor.

While in the State Senate Kenny became the Administration's floor leader but soon disaffected from Governor Olson's program on a number of major issues. In 1940 Kenny participated in an unsuccessful attempt to recall Governor Olson. In this effort he offered himself as a candidate for the Governor's post in case a recall attempt against Olson succeeded.

In November 1942 Kenny running as a Democrat was elected Attorney General for the State of California for a four year term. In this election he quietly supported Republican candidate Earl Warren against Governor Olson who ran for a second term. Both Warren and Kenny won their contests by substantial margins.

Among major developments or events occurring during Kenny's incumbency as Attorney General, January 1, 1943, to December 31, 1946, as reflected in this collection are: Kenny's interest in civil rights problems growing out of the return of wartime Japanese evacuees to California; his attendance of and reporting on the Nuremberg trials of German war criminals in March 1946; his activities in promoting a favorable solution of the problem of post-war reconversion of West Coast war industries; his reorganization of the Attorney General's Office; his efforts in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., to cause the defeat of a proposed U.S.-Mexican Water Treaty which Kenny believed was contrary to the best interests of the people of California; his activities to bring to a successful conclusion several decades of effort by the Indians of California to obtain a cash settlement of their claims against the United States Government based on treaties signed by representatives of the Government with the tribes in the 1850s; his participation in two dramatic criminal cases, which involved members of racial minority groups — the so-called Sleepy Lagoon Case and the Turner Case; his active intervention in the "Zoot Suit" riots of Los Angeles during World War II; his vigorous fight against the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in California in 1946; and his efforts to establish an international organization of lawyers with a liberal-oriented point of view during the organizing sessions of the United Nations Organization in San Francisco in 1945.

In May 1946 Kenny announced that he would run for governor. His opponent was Earl Warren, who was seeking his second term. Kenny and Warren cross-filed and thereby appeared in opposition to each other on the ballots of both major parties in the primary election of June 1946. Warren defeated Kenny on both ballots, to retain his governorship for 4 more years. Kenny completed his term as Attorney General in December 1946 and thereafter returned to private law practice in Los Angeles.

Selected List of Public and Private Offices held by Robert W. Kenny
  1. Deputy County Counsel of Los Angeles County, 1927-1931
  2. Municipal Judge, Los Angeles County, 1931-1932
  3. Superior Court Judge, Los Angeles County, 1932-1938
  4. Chairman, Democratic State Central Finance Committee, 1938
  5. State Senator from Los Angeles area, 1939-1942
  6. Director, Tivoli Beer Company
  7. Partner in law firm of Vallee, Beilenson and Kenny, 1939
  8. President, National Lawyers Guild, 1940-1948
  9. Attorney General, State of California, January 1943-December 1946
  10. Director, Los Angeles County Law Library Board, 1943
  11. President, California Housing and Planning Association, 1943
  12. Director, Oceanic Oil Company, 1944
  13. Member, Advisory Pardon Board, 1944
  14. Chairman, California Commission on Interstate Cooperation, 1945-1946.
Physical location:
For current information on the location of these materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.
Rules or conventions:
Finding aid prepared using Describing Archives: a Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Collection is open for research.

Terms of access:

All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from, or otherwise use collection materials must be submitted in writing to the Head of Public Services, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley 94720-6000. See: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/reference/permissions.html.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Robert Walker Kenny papers, BANC MSS C-B 510, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Location of this collection:
University of California, Berkeley, The Bancroft Library
Berkeley, CA 94720-6000, US
Contact:
510-642-6481
bancref-library@berkeley.edu
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