Mahlon Perkins

Mahlon Fay Perkins (23 November 1882 – 1963) was a United States diplomat. After serving in China for many years, he was consul-general in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War.^[1] It was his intervention which saved the lives of Charles Orr and Lois Orr after they had been arrested in the Stalinist crackdown on the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). He visited them several times when they were in captivity, securing their release on 1 July 1937, and placing them on a ship bound for Marseilles on 3 July.^[2]

Perkins' rescue of the Orr's took place in the context of the “the most scrupulous policy of nonintervention” by the US government in Spanish affairs. In its strict application, this policy prevented consular protection of American volunteers, such as those in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, who enlisted in the armies of the Second Spanish Republic.^[3]

Perkins, born in North Adams, Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard University in 1904.^[4] He was U.S. Vice Consul in Chefoo, 1911–12; Shanghai, 1915–17; U.S. Consul in Changsha, 1918–20; Tientsin, 1926–27; and counselor of legation in Beijing, 1928-33.^[5]

After serving in Barcelona, Mahlon Perkins was counselor of legation in Copenhagen from 1937 to 1941. In October 1940, with Denmark under German occupation, Perkins successfully resisted attempts by the IBM Corporation to use diplomatic channels "to further (its) subsidiary's work with the Nazis there".^[6]

Mahlon Perkins Jr

In 1978, his son, also named Mahlon F. Perkins (1918–2011), who was born in Shanghai, featured in a scandal that rocked the New York legal profession. The younger Perkins, then a partner in the law firm of Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine, which was representing Kodak, admitted lying in an antitrust case brought against the company. He was sentenced to a month in prison and subsequently became a civil liberties lawyer,^[7] volunteering with the Center for Constitutional Rights for over 11 years.

Perkins graduated from Harvard College in 1940 and enlisted in the US Army in 1942. He served in the Office of Strategic Services and was based in Kunming, China. At the end of the war, in August 1945, he parachuted into Beijing as a member of the 7-man Operation MAGPIE to secure the release of over 600 Allied soldiers and civilians from a Japanese prison camp, ^[8] for which he was awarded the U.S. Army’s Soldier’s Medal for Valor and the Chinese Order of the Flying Cloud.^[9]

Perkins graduated in 1949 from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and subsequently joined the firm of Donovan Leisure. He specialized in antitrust litigation, with cases such as Hughes Tool Co. v. TWA,^[10] and for years represented the American Association of Advertising Agencies.^[11]

At the Center for Constitutional Rights, Perkins worked on behalf of the Corazon Aquino government of the Philippines, for the recovery of real estate from Ferdinand Marcos; the White Earth Nation, against the taking of land without just compensation; an association of Harvard alumni seeking South African divestiture;^[12] Darryl King, for reversal of his wrongful murder conviction;^[13] and Haitian victims of human rights abuses.^[14]

References

1. Douglas J. Little, Twenty Years of Turmoil: ITT, the State Department, and Spain, 1924–1944, The Business History Review, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Winter, 1979), pp. 449–472
2. Víctor Alba and Stephen Schwartz, Spanish Marxism versus Soviet communism: a history of the P.O.U.M., ISBN 0-88738-198-7, 1988
3. Cecil Eby, For Whom the Bell Tolled, American Heritage, Vol.20, Issue 5, August 1969
4. "PRIZES AND SCHOLARSHIPS. | News | the Harvard Crimson".
5. United States, Register of the Department of State, archive.org/details/registerofdepart1945unit, p.228
6. Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust, ISBN 0-7515-3199-5, 2001, pp. 351-352
7. David Margolick, The Long Road Back for a Disgraced Patrician, New York Times, 19 January 1990
8. Lori S. Stewart, Operation MAGPIE Liberates Allied Prisoners in China, 14 August 2023, dvidshub.net/news/451316
9. Lisa Chamoff, Mahlon Fay Perkins Jr;, devoted to discourse, civic issues, dies at 92, Stamford Advocate, 8 April 2011
10. Hughes Tool Co. v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 409 U.S. 363, Justia, supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/409/363/
11. David Margolick, op.cit.
12. David Margolick, op.cit.
13. Matter of King v. New York State Div. of Parole, law.justia.com/cases/new-york/court-of-appeals/1994
14. Paul v Avril, ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/our-cases/paul-v-avril