Even Cowgirls Get The Bar Blues
Hat tip to the Texas Lawyer's Tex Parte Blog for making me aware of an interesting story.
The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas has inducted Hortense Ward, the first woman admitted to the practice of law in Texas, because cowgirls like her make an impact.
From the Tex Parte Blog:
After Ward was admitted to the bar, she also became the first woman from Texas — as well as from below the Mason-Dixon line — to be admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. As president of the Houston Equal Suffrage Association, she was the first woman registered to vote in Harris County and in the 1920s helped elect the first woman Texas governor, Miriam A. “Ma” Ferguson. She also led the charge to pass the Married Women’s Property Act, allowing married Texas women to control their own property and earnings.
Now, of course there are three women serving on the US Supreme Court and two on the Supreme Court of Texas. Indeed, Justice Harriet O'Neill served as Acting Chief Justice of our state supreme court shortly before she retired, and it was so normal and common place that it almost passed without notice.
Interesting side note: Hortense Ward may have been first at the bar, but she was second in the Cowgirl Hall of Fame. I daresay you've heard of the first cowgirl, rancher's daughter Sandra Day O'Connor.
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