Arthur Kinoy

David Finkel

ARTHUR KINOY, WHO died September 19, one day before his 83rd birthday, was a leading activist for civil rights and independent politics as well as a powerful labor attorney. His legal career extended from the defense of Communists in the late 1940s and the Rosenbergs’ case through his work, alongside Bill Kunstler, in major civil rights cases. He worked not only with Martin Luther King, Jr. but also with Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Kinoy’s longtime friend Stanley Aronowitz called him “the theoretician of a substantial left within the civil rights movement.”

For the past three decades Kinoy dedicated himself to building a radical movement for independent politics, what he hoped would become “a mass party of the people.” Toward this end he helped found and lead the Independent Progressive Politics Network, remaining active to the end even as his health declined in recent years.

ATC 107, November-December 2003