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American lawyer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Edward Treuhaft (August 8, 1912 – November 11, 2001) was an American lawyer and the second husband of Jessica Mitford.[1]
Robert Treuhaft | |
---|---|
Born | New York City, U.S. | August 8, 1912
Died | November 11, 2001 89) New York, U.S. | (aged
Alma mater | Harvard University (1934) Harvard Law School (LL.B., 1937) |
Occupation(s) | Attorney, political activist |
Spouse |
Robert Treuhaft was born on August 8, 1912, in New York City. He was the son of Hungarian Jewish immigrants.[2] He graduated from Harvard University in 1934 and attained his LL.B. degree from Harvard Law School in 1937.[3]
Treuhaft worked for labor union and radical left causes much of his life. From the early-to-mid-1940s to 1958 he and Mitford were members of the Communist Party USA, leaving the party after Khrushchev's revelations about the Stalin era.[4]
Treuhaft was admitted to the California Bar in 1944,[5] and in 1945, he began at the Oakland, California law firm Grossman, Sawyer, & Edises. In 1963, he founded his own Oakland-based firm Treuhaft, Walker, and Bernstein,[3] where Hillary Clinton worked as a summer intern in 1971.[6] Also in 1963, he provided Mitford with background and legal information that was important for Mitford's best-selling exposé of the funeral industry, which he also unofficially co-authored, The American Way of Death.[7]
In 1964, Treuhaft represented more than 700 Free Speech Movement students arrested during a two-day sit-in at the University of California in Berkeley. He and his firm also represented anti-Vietnam War protesters, Black Panther Party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).[3]
Before his death, Treuhaft specified that any memorial donations be sent to "Send a Piano to Havana" project, which was started by his son Benjamin Treuhaft, whom the State Department had prevented from taking a piano to the embargoed island.[8]
Treuhaft died on November 11, 2001.
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