Swinburne Hale

Swinburne Hale (1884–1937) was an American lawyer, poet, and socialist, best remembered as one of the leading civil rights attorneys 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.

[1][2] In 1905, Hale received his Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University, where he lived in Grays Hall during freshman year.

He also served as counsel for communists taken to Ellis Island[1] for deportation as a result of the Palmer Raids that comprised the First Red Scare.

[1] In 1925, Hale bought a coal yard in Westport, Connecticut, to remake into a studio with apartments as an artists and writers colony.