Kenneth Alton MacDonald

Background

Kenneth Alton MacDonald was born on October 30, 1917, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was raised in Quincy, Massachusetts. Cambridge lies across the Charles River from Boston and is home to Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while Quincy is a city on the South Shore, south of Boston.

He was born during the First World War, and his college years at Dartmouth in the late 1930s coincided with the Great Depression. These years shaped the educational path that led him from New Hampshire to the Harvard Law School and then into the legal profession in Massachusetts and later Washington State.

Education

MacDonald received a Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College in 1939 after four years of college study there. Dartmouth, founded in 1769 in Hanover, New Hampshire, is one of the nine colonial colleges established before the American Revolution, and its undergraduate program was built around a liberal arts curriculum.

He then studied at Harvard Law School and received a Bachelor of Laws in 1942, the same year he was admitted to the Massachusetts bar. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School was among the oldest law schools in the United States, and the Bachelor of Laws was the principal law degree conferred there during his time. Shortly after completing his legal education, he enlisted in the United States Army in December 1942.

Career

MacDonald enlisted in the United States Army at Boston on December 9, 1942. He served with the 10th Mountain Division, a light infantry unit trained at Camp Hale in Colorado and later deployed to the mountains of northern Italy during the Second World War. For combat operations at Mount Belvedere on February 21, 1945, he received the Bronze Star Medal, and he was wounded near Castel d'Aiano on April 14, 1945. He attained the rank of technical sergeant.

After the war he settled in Seattle in 1946, having been admitted to the Washington bar in 1947 following his earlier Massachusetts admission. In 1952 he co-founded the Seattle firm MacDonald Hoague & Bayless with Fran Hoague and Alec Bayless. The firm's early practice included fair-housing, discrimination, and civil liberties cases, and its founders were among the Seattle lawyers who took on Cold War-era cases.

From 1958 to 1968 he served on the Washington State Board Against Discrimination, becoming its chairman in 1962. The Washington State Legislature had created the board in 1949 to enforce the state's Fair Employment Practices Act, which prohibited discrimination in hiring based on race, creed, color, or national origin. Its authority was later extended to public accommodations and publicly assisted housing, and it was renamed the Washington State Human Rights Commission in 1971.

From 1965 to 1978 he was a member of the State of Washington Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. The federal commission, created in 1957, investigates claims of discrimination and advises the federal government, and its state advisory committees reported on conditions within their own states.

In 1973 he began serving as an adjunct professor at the University of Puget Sound School of Law in Tacoma, Washington, where he taught a course on the law of race and sex discrimination. He also worked as an arbitrator for the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, an independent federal agency created in 1947 to help resolve labor-management disputes.

Achievements

• Represented clients called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, including Margaret Jean Schuddakopf, a Tacoma School District counselor accused of communism, and University of Washington employees who refused to sign a Cold War loyalty oath. These cases reflected the period's tension between anticommunist investigations and individual civil liberties.

• Volunteered to defend four students, among the 56 who took part, who were prosecuted after the May 1969 takeover of Parkhurst Hall at Dartmouth College, a student protest on the campus of his alma mater.

Politics

MacDonald's public positions centered on civil liberties and civil rights rather than on partisan campaigning. As a lawyer he represented people summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee and University of Washington employees who refused to sign a Cold War loyalty oath. He also served on a state anti-discrimination board and on a state advisory committee to the federal Commission on Civil Rights, positions that reflected concern with equal treatment under the law.

The House Un-American Activities Committee investigated alleged communist influence in American public life from the late 1930s until 1975, and in the 1950s its inquiries and loyalty oath requirements prompted sharp debate over freedom of speech and association. Lawyers who defended witnesses in such proceedings often worked alongside organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposed government measures it considered threats to constitutional rights. MacDonald's casework and his board service suggest a sustained commitment to these principles, and his practice reflected the civil liberties concerns of that period.

Membership

MacDonald was a board member of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and was active in its Seattle chapter. The American Civil Liberties Union, founded in 1920, is a nonprofit organization that defends individual rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution, including freedom of speech, due process, and equal protection.

He was also a trustee and committee chairman in the Seattle-King County Bar Association, a local bar organization serving attorneys in the Seattle area. Bar associations of this kind typically promote professional standards and public access to legal services, and the association's lawyer referral committee connected members of the public with attorneys.

• Board member

  American Civil Liberties Union of Washington , United States

  1952 - 1964

• Trustee; chairman of the Lawyers Referral Committee

  Seattle-King County Bar Association , United States

  1957 - 1960

Connections

MacDonald was married when he enlisted in the United States Army on December 9, 1942. He co-founded MacDonald Hoague & Bayless in 1952 with Fran Hoague and Alec Bayless, and all three had relocated to Seattle after their wartime service.

References

• Kenneth A. MacDonald papers, 1950-1968 Finding aid for MacDonald's papers at the University of Washington Libraries, documenting his work on House Un-American Activities Committee cases, his service with the Washington State Board Against Discrimination, and his membership in the Seattle chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
• MacDonald, Kenneth A., 1917-2012 Dartmouth College archival biography covering his birth in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his Dartmouth and Harvard Law School degrees, his practice, and his defense of Dartmouth students after the 1969 Parkhurst Hall takeover.
• Kenneth A. MacDonald oral history Oral history interview describing MacDonald's Dartmouth and Harvard Law School background, his enlistment in the Army in 1942, his service with the 10th Mountain Division at Camp Hale, and his wartime decoration.
• Our History Firm history of MacDonald Hoague & Bayless, founded in 1952 by Ken MacDonald, Fran Hoague, and Alec Bayless after their wartime service, and describing the firm's civil liberties and civil rights litigation.