Swinburne Hale

Swinburne Hale (1884–1937) was an American lawyer and poet who is best remembered as one of the leading civil rights attorneys of the decade of the 1920s. Hale was a Harvard College classmate of Roger Nash Baldwin and law partner of Walter Nelles and Isaac Shorr and was active in the establishment and early work of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Hale also played a role in the progressive politics of the early 1920s as a leading member of the Committee of Forty-Eight and a spokesman for the fledgling Farmer-Labor Party.

Biography

Early years

Swinburne Hale was born in 1884 in Ithaca, New York, one of four children of Latin scholar William Gardner Hale, head of the Latin Department at the University of Chicago.[1] His mother, the former Harriett Knowles Swinburne, was college-educated and active in the women's suffrage movement.[1]

Hale received his Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University in 1905, where he lived in Grays Hall during freshman year.[1] He then enrolled in Harvard Law School, obtaining his LL.B. degree in 1908.[1]

During World War I, Hale was a member of Hale, Nelles, and Shorr, which "defended radicals." In 1920, Hale wrote to Tom Mooney, "We are in a hot bed of repression here, with only a very few lawyers who are willing and able to handle the situation, and who are hopelessly overworked."[2] His partners were Isaac Shorr and Walter Nelles. Carlo Tresco, a prominent Italian anarchist, was well acquainted with them.[3]

Political activity

In the fall of 1920 Hale was a publicist for the newly formed Farmer-Labor Party.[4] In his efforts on behalf of the FLP, Hale was careful to delineate the differences between his fledgling organization and the rival Socialist Party of America (SPA), noting that while the SPA included only "simon-pure socialists," the FLP made a broader appeal, targeting not only wage-workers but also farmers, small business proprietors, and professionals.[4]

Death and legacy

Swinburne Hale died in 1937.

Hale's papers are housed at the New York Public Library in New York City, where they occupy 8 archival boxes and 1 oversized folder.[1]

Footnotes
  1. Marleen Buelinckx, "Swinburne Hale Papers, 1901-1924: Online Finding Aid," New York Public Library, 2003.
  2. Polenberg, Richard (1999). Fighting Faiths: The Abrams Case, the Supreme Court, and Free Speech. Cornell University Press. p. 75. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
  3. Pernicone, Nunzio (25 April 2011). Carlo Tresca: Portrait of a Rebel. Read How You Want. p. 227 (firm), 397 (Darrow). Retrieved 27 September 2017.
  4. "'Farmer-Labor Party has Hold in West' -S. Hale: Foundations Being Laid for a Great Third Party to Become of Vital Importance in American Politics," Harvard Crimson, Oct. 18, 1920.

Works
  • Do We Need More Sedition Laws? : Testimony of Alfred Bettman and Swinburne Hale before the Committee on Rules of the House of Representatives. New York: American Civil Liberties Union, n.d. [1920].
  • "Reds, Deportations, and Palmerism," in Alexander Trachtenberg and Benjamin Glassberg (eds.), The American Labor Year Book, 1921-1922. New York: Rand School of Social Science, n.d. [1921]; pp. 34–39.
  • The Demon's Notebook: Verse and Perverse. New York: N.L. Brown, 1923.
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