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Robert E. Treuhaft Papers

Call Number

TAM.664

Dates

1893-2002, inclusive
; 1960-1980, bulk

Creator

Treuhaft, Benjamin (Role: Donor)
Mitford, Jessica, 1917-1996
Treuhaft, Robert E.
Romilly, Constancia (Role: Donor)

Extent

5.5 Linear Feet in 5 record cartons, one manuscript box and one oversized box.

Language of Materials

Materials are in English, with a few documents in Hungarian and German.

Abstract

Robert E. Treuhaft (1912-2001) a radical left-wing attorney prominent in progressive and New Left politics in the San Francisco Bay Area, was known for his work as a civil rights and civil liberties attorney as well as representing New Left organizations and individuals, such as the Free Speech Movement. He was perhaps equally well-known for his wife, muckraking writer Jessica Mitford, radical and rebellious daughter of a family of conservative British aristocrats and author of a best-selling expose of the funeral industry, The American Way of Death, for which Treuhaft contributed the research. Treuhaft and Mitford joined the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) in 1943 and remained members until 1958. Treuhaft provided legal representation for "unfriendly" witnesses subpoenaed by the U.S. House of Representatives' Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC); he himself and Mitford were called to testify before the Committee in 1953, where they also failed to cooperate with the Committee by "naming names." As a consequence of this, and their other political activities Treuhaft and Mitford were constantly surveilled and frequently harassed by federal, state, and local government agencies. The collection consists of of legal case files, business and personal correspondence, internal memos, FOIA files, published and unpublished writings, newspaper clippings.

Historical/Biographical Note

Robert Edward Treuhaft, a radical left-wing attorney prominent in progressive and New Left politics in the San Francisco Bay Area, was born in the Bronx, New York City, in 1912, the oldest child of Hungarian Jewish immigrants. He attended public schools and became the first person from his Brooklyn high school to be admitted to Harvard University. He graduated from Harvard in 1934, and obtained a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1937. After graduation from law school he worked for a labor law firm in New York City for, whose clients included the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. In 1941, he took a position in Washington, D.C., with the enforcement division of the wartime Office of Price Administration (OPA). At OPA, he met his future wife, Jessica Mitford Romilly (known as Decca Mitford, radical and rebellious daughter from a famously eccentric and conservative family of British aristocrats), who was also working at the agency. In 1943 Treuhaft left the OPA and moved to the West Coast to work for the War Labor Board's San Francisco office and to join Mitford, who had also taken a job in San Francisco. They married soon after their arrival to the Bay Area. In 1945, Treuhaft joined the law firm of Gladstein, Grossman, Sawyer & Edises. At Gladstein he represented West Coast labor unions expelled from the CIO as a result of accusations that they were Communist-led or dominated. A few years later he and Bertram Edises established their own firm. They became well-known as civil rights attorneys when they successfully defended, Jerry Newson, an 18-year-old African American man, against a framed-up murder charge. Treuhaft also acted as counsel for the East Bay Civil Rights Congress from 1949 to 1956, advocating for clients suffering racial discrimination and he brought pioneering police brutality suits against the Oakland Police department.

In 1963, Treuhaft and Doris "Dobby" Walker (a long-time friend and political ally of Treuhaft and Mitford's) founded their own law firm (through the years joined by different partners, beginning with Malcolm Burnstein, as well as numerous young associates and interns, including future Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during the summer of 1971). Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Treuhaft, Walker & Burnstein represented clients in civil rights cases (as well as handling more general law, such as wills and divorces, for clients among the African American and progressive communities in the area); they also became well-known for representing New Left organizations and activists. Treuhaft acted as counsel for the Free Speech Movement, representing the more than 700 students arrested at the University of California at Berkeley during a two-day sit-in in 1964. He himself was also arrested during the sit-in, at the direction of then- Assistant District Attorney of Alameda County, Edwin Meese, who later became Attorney General during the Reagan presidency. In addition, Treuhaft and his firm represented anti-Vietnam War protesters, Black Panther Party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and University of California students and town residents arrested during the struggle over People's Park in Berkeley. Treuhaft's expansive vision of civil liberties included child custody cases in which he defended clients whose parental rights being challenged on the basis of their cultural lifestyles. As part of his lifelong concern for the rights and welfare of ordinary citizens, Treuhaft became interested in consumer rights and protections. In 1962 he co-wrote a handbook for California lawyers on debtors' rights. When he became aware of deceptive practices by funeral homes he helped to found the Bay Area Funeral Society to serve as a model for simpler and less expensive funerals, and took a year's leave of absence from his law practice to research the topic more deeply. He also assisted his wife with writing The American Way of Death, an expose on the funeral industry based on his research. Published in 1963, the The American Way of Death became an enormous (and to the Treuhafts, entirely unexpected) success, a bestselling book, and made Mitford--already a published writer--famous as a muckraking journalist, known for her special blend of investigative journalism with political satire. As a consequence of the publicity surrounding the American Way of Death Treuhaft was appointed by California Governor Jerry Brown as a public member to the California State Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers (much to the consternation of funeral directors throughout the country).

Treuhaft also participated in local and community politics. In 1966 he ran (and lost the race) for District Attorney for Alameda County against the longtime rightwing incumbent Frank Coakley. He served several terms on the board of the Consumers Cooperative of Berkeley (better known as the Berkeley Co-Op), a small group member-run supermarkets in the Bay Area, including one after a hotly-contested election campaign, in which he ran on a slate of progressives. He was also instrumental in getting the Co-Op board to pass a resolution cutting off its contributions to the national organization of co-operative stores, the Cooperative League of America, because it had accepted funds from the CIA.

In 1982, Treuhaft and Walker dissolved their partnership. From this time through his retirement in 1997 Treuhaft began to specialize in workers' compensation cases and appeals to the Social Security Administration. Robert Treuhaft was also active in progressive attorneys' organizations such as the National Lawyers Guild (he served as a vice president and was honored by it, along with Mitford, with a testimonial dinner in 1985). As a member of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) he served on an mission to Portugal in 1964 to investigate torture of political prisoners (as a result he and fellow commission members were arrested and expelled from the country by the authoritarian government of Antonio Salazar), and to Okinawa in 1969 to investigate human rights violations by the United States.

Treuhaft and Jessica Mitford joined the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) in 1943 and remained members until 1958. Treuhaft provided legal representation for "unfriendly" witnesses subpoenaed by the U.S. House of Representatives' Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He himself and Mitford were called to testify before the Committee in 1953. They refused to "name names," (that is, identify for the Committee their own or others' political affiliations or memberships). Treuhaft took issue publicly with those who did, including in a 1984 article in The Nation on his Harvard class' 50th reunion. As a consequence of this, and their other political activities the Treuhafts were constantly surveilled and frequently harassed by federal, state, and local government agencies, up to and including being denied passports.

Treuhaft and Mitford raised two children to adulthood—Benjamin, their second son (another son, Nicholas, died at age ten), and Constancia "Dinky" Romilly, Mitford's daughter from her first marriage. Jessica Mitford died in 1996. Treuhaft completed The American Way of Death Revisited (published 1998), the update of The American Way of Death Mitford had been working on at the time of her death. Robert Treuhaft died on November 11, 2001.

Arrangement

Organized into eleven series.

I, Biographical
II, Correspondence - Business
III, Correspondence - Personal
IV, Law Office/Partnerships
V, Legal Case Files
VI, Miscellaneous
VII, Organizations
VIII, Political Issues/Activism
IX, Research
X, Writings
XI, Wills

Arrangement is mostly in alphabetical order by folder title and in chronological order when there is more than one folder with the same title. Correspondence combines incoming and outgoing letters.

Scope and Content Note

This collection consists of legal case files, business and personal correspondence, internal memos, FOIA files, published and unpublished writings, newspaper clippings, and other materials that document much of the public and political life, and some of the private life, of Robert Treuhaft. They also document political/civil liberties legal cases stemming from a number of historic events of the 1960s, the Free Speech Movement, People's Park, and the march on the California State capitol by members of the Black Panther Party.

Conditions Governing Access

Materials are open without restrictions.

Conditions Governing Use

Any rights (including copyright and related rights to publicity and privacy) held by Robert E. Treuhaft, the creator of this collection, were relinquished and transferred to the public domain in 2015 by Benjamin Treuhaft and Constancia Romilly. These materials are governed by a Creative Commons CC0 license, which permits publication and reproduction of materials accompanied by full attribution. See, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.

Preferred Citation

Identification of item, date; Robert E. Treuhaft Papers; TAM 664; box number; folder number; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.

Location of Materials

Materials are located at the Tamiment Library.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Donated by Benjamin Treuhaft and Constancia Romilly in 2015. The accession number associated with this donation is 2015.09.

Audiovisual Access Policies and Procedures

Audiovisual materials have not been preserved and may not be available to researchers. Materials not yet digitized will need to have access copies made before they can be used. To request an access copy, or if you are unsure if an item has been digitized, please contact tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu with the collection name, collection number, and a description of the item(s) requested. A staff member will respond to you with further information.

Appraisal

Routine worker compensation case files were discarded, with the exception of a sample retained to illustrate this aspect of Robert Treuhaft's practice; duplicate documents were also discarded. Strictly personal documents have been returned to the donors.

Separated Materials

1/4" audiotapes originally in folder "Siegel, Dan People v. folder (give #?)

Related Archival Materials

Jessica Mitford Collection, Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Ohio State University. Jessica Mitford Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

Bibliography

Larsen, Robert. Treuhaft, Robert E. Berkeley Historical Society. Oakland, California, 1988-1989. "Left-Wing Political Activist and Progressive Leader in the Berkeley Co-op Robert E. Treuhaft." Consumers Cooperative of Berkeley Oral History Collection. http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt4x0nb0bf/
Lewis, Paul. "Robert Treuhaft, 89, Lawyer Who Inspired Funeral Exposé." New York Times, December 2, 2001. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/02/us/robert-treuhaft-89-lawyer-who-inspired-funeral-expose.html
Lisker, Susan. "Treuhaft, Walker, Brown and Cooper: An Unusual Law Firm." University of California, Berkeley, 1976.
Mitford, Jessica. A Fine Old Conflict. New York: Alfred A. Knopf , 1977.
"National Lawyers Guild Bay Area Testimonial Dinner 1985--Jessica Mitford, Robert Treuhaft Honorees." (program)
Oliver, Myrna. "Robert Treuhaft, 89; Crusading Attorney." Los Angeles Times, November 16, 2001. http://articles.latimes.com/2001/nov/16/local/me-4896
Wilmot, Ingrid. "Dining In,' [profile of Robert Treuhaft], San Francisco Magazine, May 1965, p.54.

Collection processed by

Erika Gottfried

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-20 16:41:05 -0400.
Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language: English

Processing Information

With the exception of the wills series, all of the materials in this collection have been re-foldered into archival folders and placed in archival boxes. In most cases original folder titles were retained. In those instances where an original folder itself could be considered a document (that is, it had notes or other information other than title or date written on it), the original folder (or part of it) was retained and filed in the new folder with the original documents.

Repository

Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
2nd Floor
New York, NY 10012