Mary Metlay Kaufman ’37

Sows the Seeds of Progressive Advocacy

By Jay Hedges ’21

I CAME TO ST. JOHN’S LAW intent on becoming a lawyer who advocates for social justice. So, as a 2L, I jumped at the chance to help launch the Law School’s student chapter of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), the nation’s oldest and largest progressive bar association. Little did I know that this affiliation would lead me to unearth a splendid bit of history connecting St. John’s— and me—to one of the NLG’s most notable original members.

It all started with an invitation.

With people across the country taking to the streets to protest anti-Black violence and racism, I was drawn to the work of the NLG’s Mass Defense Committee (MDC). Through its regional chapters, the MDC provides pro bono legal representation to protesters who are arrested during social justice demonstrations. It also recruits thousands of “legal observers” to monitor and document police actions during protests.

Given my involvement with the NLG and my work as a legal observer, I was asked to find a panelist for a discussion hosted by the Law School’s Public Interest Center. I invited the former NLG-NYC Chapter MDC Chair, Bruce Bentley, to share his experience and explain how students could assist social justice movements. On the morning of the panel, he gave me a short article written by the late Hon. Elliott Wilk about an early and longtime NLG member, Mary Metlay Kaufman.

As I read about Kaufman and her work for progressive causes, I was delighted to discover that she was a St. John’s Law alumna. And, as I further explored her contributions in the field until her death in 1995, I couldn’t help but notice that they seemed to outline the history of the legal left in the United States during the 20th century.

In 1937, right after graduating from St. John’s, Kaufman advocated for, and organized, labor unions as a lawyer for New Deal agencies. Around the same time, she became one of the founding members of the racially integrated NLG as it organized in response to the American Bar Association’s exclusion of Black attorneys. That same thirst for justice took Kaufman to Nuremburg, Germany at the end of the Second World War, to serve as one of very few women on the team prosecuting Nazi war criminals.

When she returned home to the United States, Kaufman was disturbed by McCarthyism’s impact on leftist political

organizing. To her, the Red Scare, with its suppression of political dissent, resembled the political and social climate in Nazi Germany before the outbreak of WWII. Taking action, she began representing prominent communist party leaders who were being persecuted for their political beliefs.

Political and cultural currents continued to inform and shape Kaufman’s efforts on behalf of progressive causes over the next two decades. In the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s, she shined as a zealous anti-war and nuclear disarmament advocate. She started the NLG’s MDC in 1968 to support student anti-war protesters at Columbia University. From there, the MDC’s work expanded under Kaufman’s watch to aid radical political groups like the Attica prison inmates, Black Panther Party, and Young Lords. My account here is just a small sampling of Kaufman’s long history of creative legal advocacy and activism. A voluminous collection of her papers can be found in the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College. They contain incredible nuggets of legal left history including: Kaufman’s correspondence with prominent Black radicals such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Claudia Jones; meeting minutes of the American Institute for Marxist Studies in the 1960s; syllabi from courses Kaufman taught in the 1970s on Racism and the Law, McCarthyism: Political Hysteria and Repression in the U.S., and From Nuremberg to Vietnam; and a resolution from the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression titled Ban the Klan.

Some 25 years after her death, I was proud to help my fellow St. John’s Law students reap benefits from the seeds of progressive advocacy that Kaufman sowed. With the help of my co-founders, Jeremy Ashton ‘21 and Heidi Simpson ’21, St. John’s nascent student chapter of the NLG became an official student organization in Fall 2020. We hit the ground running in the wake of historic mass protests against police brutality by organizing legal observer trainings and building camaraderie among a growing group of students committed to fighting for the transformation of our legal system.

Now, as I begin my career as a tenant lawyer with the Legal Aid Society, I remain in awe of Mary Metlay Kaufman’s ceaseless advocacy for justice. I look forward to carrying on her legacy of rejecting systemic oppression in every form and laboring to reshape the world for the better.

Photo: Office of Military Government for Germany (U.S.), Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons Jay Hedges is a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s Housing Justice Unit in Queens, representing tenants facing eviction. He remains an active member of the New York City Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and looks forward to continuing to support progressive social movements in the city.