This series includes a variety of material by and about Dorothy Kenyon that documents her personal history, her professional activities, and her wide-ranging accomplishments. It is arranged in the following subseries: Writings about Kenyon, Interviews, Tributes and testimonials, Education, Awards, Honorary degrees, Memberships, Legal documents, Financial documents, Contacts, Calendars, Professional credentials, Funeral records, and Memorabilia. The bulk of the items in this series date from 1920-71. Memorabilia contains a significant amount of material from Kenyon's infancy and childhood, including a meticulously detailed baby book kept by her father, William Stanton Kenyon. Writings about Kenyon includes biographical and autobiographical material, resumes, newspaper clippings and an unpublished scholarly article. The material assembled by Kenyon's sister-in-law and prospective biographer Mildred Adams Kenyon consists of approximately 1 linear foot containing research notes, correspondence, reminiscences, a few photographs, and a complete draft of Mildred Kenyon's unpublished book. This material is particularly rich as it contains a great deal of information about Dorothy Kenyon's childhood and personal life that is not evident in the documents she herself saved. This subseries spans the years from 1924 until 1980 when Mildred Adams Kenyon died. See also oral history tapes in SERIES IX. AUDIOVISUAL MATERIAL.

This series consists primarily of correspondence but it also contains financial records, keepsakes, legal documents, memorabilia, newspaper clippings, and writings generated by or about various members of Kenyon's extended family between 1850 and 1998. The series is divided into two subseries: Individuals and Special events. Individuals is arranged alphabetically with material about miscellaneous family members filed at the end of the subseries. Each person's file contains various types of material by or about them. These papers document individuals' lives but they also reveal a great deal about interpersonal relationships, early 20th-century upper-middle-class child-rearing practices, and Kenyon family history. Most of the keepsakes, financial documents, memorabilia and writings in this series originated with Kenyon's father William Houston Kenyon. Special events includes MATERIAL related to William Stanton Kenyon's wedding to his second wife Lestra Kinney Kenyon in 1909, and the multi-generational Kenyon family railroad trip to the Canadian Rockies in 1969. These are also arranged alphabetically and contain material by or about various members of the Kenyon family. See also oral history tapes in SERIES IX. AUDIOVISUAL MATERIAL, and SERIES VIII. PHOTOGRAPHS.

This series contains both personal and professional correspondence. Family correspondence can be found in SERIES II. FAMILY. Correspondence related to specific political appointments, organization work or other activities is filed in the appropriate series. This series is arranged in three subseries: General, Friends and associates, and Letters to the editor. General correspondence includes incoming and outgoing letters dating from 1918 to 1972, with the vast majority of the letters generated between 1949 and 1972. This subseries consists of routine personal, professional and political correspondence arranged chronologically. Typical correspondence included here are personal letters congratulating Kenyon on her various achievements, fundraising requests, holiday greetings, invitations, public response mail, RSVPs, and thank you notes. Friends and associates dates from 1917 to 1971 and contains both personal and professional correspondence arranged alphabetically. It includes such significant signatories as Hubert Humphrey, Fiorello LaGuardia, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, among many others, whose letters demonstrate Kenyon's political prominence during the 1930s-60s. This subseries also includes candid and revealing correspondence with some of Kenyon's most intimate associates such as Walcott Pitkin, Gertrude Besse King, Elihu Root, and L. Valentine Pulsifer. Kenyon's Letters to the editor date from 1948-1971 and are arranged chronologically. They address many and varied topics including civil liberties, civil rights, U.S. foreign policy, New York City and international politics, integration, the legal system, and women's rights.

Dorothy Kenyon was a prolific writer and a much sought-after speaker. This series contains published articles, unpublished drafts, speech notes and texts, and related correspondence and publicity. It is arranged in five subseries: Correspondence, Articles and addresses, Book reviews, Encyclopedia entries, and Book-length manuscripts, with each of these arranged chronologically. Correspondence includes primarily writing and speaking invitations and negotiations regarding honoraria and travel arrangements dating from 1946-1970. Articles and addresses comprises the largest category in this series. They date from 1925-71, are arranged chronologically, and include notes, drafts, and final versions of articles and speeches with related publicity enclosed. In keeping with her broad involvement in social justice activities, Kenyon wrote and spoke about a large number of subjects including anti-communism, civil liberties, education, internationalism, politics, racism, and women's rights, among many others. See the Appendix for a listing of articles and addresses by subject.

This series contains material that relates directly to Kenyon's legal career. It does not include any client or case files; Houston and Mildred Kenyon, who facilitated the transfer of Kenyon's papers to the Sophia Smith Collection, regarded that material as strictly private. The series is arranged in four subseries: Clients and contacts, Cases, Judicial files, and Research files. Clients and contacts contains lists of Kenyon's clients, lists of the documents and material she held in safekeeping for some of those clients, and contact information for both clients and professional associates. Cases includes appeals, briefs, and motions for cases in which Kenyon was directly involved in her private practice as well as for the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York City Bar Association. These are arranged by case and in chronological order. Judicial files contains a small amount of material Kenyon saved from her short tenure as a municipal judge including a collection of jury charges, an outline of the judge's role during a trial, and one opinion Kenyon rendered as a judge. Research files consists of legal briefs, memoranda, petitions, and printed records of cases in which Kenyon was interested, but not directly involved. These are arranged chronologically.

This series--by far the largest one in the collection--documents the wide range of Kenyon's political and professional interests and activities from the 1920s through 1971. Throughout these five decades Kenyon participated in a vast number of social movements including labor, women's rights, civil liberties, civil rights, international human rights, and the fight against poverty. As a proponent of these causes she was active in scores of organizations that covered the spectrum from radical to liberal. Because of her liberal record and her political skill and effectiveness Kenyon was appointed to highly regarded positions as the U.S. delegate to the League of Nations Committee to Study the Legal Status of Women in 1937 and the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in 1947. For the same reasons she also had to mount a major defense of her political history and reputation after she was targeted by Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1950. The League of Nations, the United Nations, and the McCarthy Hearings--each containing correspondence, committee files, internal memoranda, publications, reports, and research files--represent some of the most important segments of this series. The series is arranged alphabetically by the name of the activity or organization.

The largest amount of material in this series--next to the League of Nations, the McCarthy hearings, and the United Nations--relates to Kenyon's work in the American Civil Liberties Union; to her central role in Chilmark Associates, which managed the Barn House cooperative on Martha's Vineyard; and to her participation in community development activities on the Lower West Side of Manhattan. The ACLU material includes correspondence, committee files, conference programs, newspaper clippings, and research files on issues addressed by the organization such as abortion, race exclusion, sex discrimination, and free speech. Legal cases Kenyon prepared for the ACLU are located in SERIES V. LEGAL PRACTICE. The Chilmark Associates files contain correspondence among members, legal and financial documents, meeting minutes, and reports. Lower West Side Community Development Activities serves as the heading for the large number of organizations that comprised Kenyon's work in the War on Poverty in the 1960s. This material is quite rich and contains correspondence, committee files, minutes, memoranda, proposals, publicity, reports, and financial data for groups such as the Community Corporation of the Lower West Side and Mobilization for Youth. Other major organizations represented in this series include the American Labor Party, Americans for Democratic Action, League for Mutual Aid, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the Women's Strike Coalition.

This series is arranged alphabetically by subject and includes topics in which Kenyon had a particular interest including abortion, anti-communism, civil rights, conscription of women into the armed forces, the Equal Rights Amendment, jury service for women, the status of women, and the Supreme Court, among others. It appears that Kenyon kept these files in order to save and organize information that she might later use in her speeches and articles. Some of them, such as the file on the Equal Rights Amendment, consist of a variety of material that was clearly gathered over several decades. Others, such as the file on Richard Nixon contain only one item. Types of material included in this series include articles, newspaper clippings, notes, writings by others, and miscellaneous printed material.

This series, consists primarily of black-and-white photographic prints. It is arranged in the following subseries: Personal and family; Formal portraits of Kenyon alone; Kenyon in professional settings with groups; Kenyon in her United Nations Work; Kenyon at the McCarthy hearings; and Kenyon receiving honors. The series also includes an album compiled by Kenyon's cousin Katherine Wilby that contains photos of Kenyon's and Wilby's European tour in 1908 and numerous photos of the Kenyon and Wilby families during the years between 1900-1910. See also SERIES X. OVERSIZE MATERIALS

This series consists solely of audiotapes and is arranged in two subseries: Events and Interviews. Events includes recordings of events in which Kenyon participated, including her testimony before the Tydings Senate Foreign Relations Committee in response to McCarthy's charges (1950), and her 80th birthday party (1968). Other MATERIAL relating to these events can be found in SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL--Tributes and Testimonials; SERIES VI. ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS--McCarthy Hearings; and SERIES IX. PHOTOGRAPHS. Interviews includes interviews with Kenyon as well as interviews with others about her. Two of the three interviews with Kenyon focus on her work with the United Nations in the late 1940s; the third was conducted by Jacqueline Van Voris in 1971 as part of the Smith College Centennial Study. The interviews about Kenyon are some of the most recent additions to the collection. These came from Louise Wilby Knight (granddaughter of Kenyon's first cousin Katherine Curtis Wilby) who interviewed her mother, Frances Berna Knight, in 1997 and Kenyon's nephew, Tipton Kenyon, in 1998. There is a transcript of the Van Voris interview with Kenyon in SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL--Interviews. Additional MATERIAL relating to Tipton Kenyon and Louise Wilby Knight can be found in SERIES II.--Family.

This series includes items too large to be contained in regular archival boxes including certificates and a diploma (see also SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL and SERIES IX. PHOTOGRAPHS]; a photograph of a League of Nations function [see also SERIES VI. ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS--League of Nations and SERIES IX. PHOTOGRAPHS]; a framed cartoon by Herblock depicting Kenyon's response to McCarthy [see also SERIES VI. ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS--McCarthy Hearings], and and oversized LP containing an interview with Kenyon about her work with the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women [see also SERIES VI. ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS--United Nations, and SERIES IX. AUDIOVISUAL MATERIAL--Interviews].