Archives West Finding Aid

School guidance counselor. Eric Hawkinson was guidance director for the Kent School District during the 1950s and the early 1960s. In the late 1950s he came under the attack of various right-wing pressure groups who strongly objected to a new series of personality tests which were administered under his supervision to high school students throughout the district. As a result of this controversy, Mr. Hawkinson became concerned about the activities of persons and organizations he regarded as being part of the radical right. He was accused of alleged communist sympathies, and prepared his own defense with the assistance of the Anti-Defamation League. The attack broadened into an attack on the school system itself, but a report by an outside consultins firm largely dissipated the charges against the school system and Mr. Hawkinson. In 1964 Mr. Hawkinson was a delegate from Washington State to the national convention of the National Education Association in Denver, where he participated in a panel on right-wing pressure groups.