Clara Shortridge Foltz – Barrier Breaker

by Pebbla Wallace, LACHS Board Member

Clara Shortridge Foltz - *Photo: Security Pacific National Bank Collection / Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection*

Many of you may have heard the name Clara Shortridge Foltz as the name of the Criminal Courthouse building located downtown on Temple and Spring. Or maybe you have heard her name as the first female lawyer in California. But many may not know her importance as a barrier breaker for women and her fight for Women’s Rights in California and the United States.

Clara Shortridge Foltz’s original motivation for being an attorney was not to make headlines, making a statement, or even making a name for herself. It was simply to make a living and make sure her children were cared for.

Her story begins at her place of birth in Milton, Indiana. Her family later moved to Iowa where she eloped and married Jeremiah Foltz in 1864 when she was only 15 and eventually moved to San Jose. After living in San Jose for a period, her husband took what money they had and went to Portland claiming to look for work (he deserted her and the children). Clara was stuck in San Jose raising 5 children. While she tried to make a living doing “woman’s work” - sewing, cleaning, taking in boarders, it just wasn’t enough. Her decision to become a lawyer was influenced by her father who was a lawyer and preacher. She loved the law, and she thought it would be a good profession to help make a living. But every time she tried to pursue a career in law, a door hit her in the face.

The major way to become an attorney in the 1870s, was to study law by apprenticing with an established lawyer and taking the bar exam. Clara requested an apprenticeship with a family friend Frances Spencer, who had one of the largest and prominent law firms in San Jose. Unfortunately, she received this rejection letter:

“My dear young friend – My high regards to your parents, and for you, who seem to have no right understanding of what you say you want to undertake, forbid encouraging you in so foolish a pursuit – wherein you would invite nothing but ridicule if not contempt. A woman’s place is at a home, unless it is as a teacher. If you would like a position in our public schools, I will be glad to recommend you, for I think you are well qualified”[1].

After this denial, Clara studied with another friend of her father in a more modest office. After she completed her apprenticeship, she found out there was another hurdle to tackle - only men could take the State Bar exam. But Clara did not give up, instead she wrote the Woman’s Lawyer’s Bill which allowed women to practice law (see Women’s Lawyer Bill article).

Clara later moved to Los Angeles with her family where she had a long and successful career as an attorney - practicing probate, criminal, family, and corporate law. But some of her very first cases involved helping to reclaim the property for young women who were put in vulnerable circumstances by desertion, illness, or an ex-employer. During the fifty years she practiced law, she was often the only woman in the courtroom.

Reforms made possible

In the interest of justice, Clara was responsible for numerous reforms and achievements at both the state and local levels.

Prisoner Cages – Clara came to the court one day to find her client in a cage. She waged a war on the cages, and the following day she delivered an anti-cage petition to City Hall, and on the way dropped a copy by the local newspaper. Within forty-eight hours, the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution, the mayor signed an order, and the cages were gone forever.

Prisoner Treatment Reform – Clara also worked for better treatment for prisoners in California jails, obtaining segregation of the juvenile inmates from the adult prisoners and the appointment of a matron in the county jail.

The Parole Bill - Clara drafted and procured passage of an act creating a parole system for the State of California called the California Parole Bill. This bill, adopted in 1893, provided that any prisoner, other than one convicted of first or second-degree murder, may be paroled after serving at least one year of his or her term. She also advocated for the adoption of a system to rehabilitate convicted criminals.

The Public Defender – Besides the Woman’s Lawyer Bill, Foltz is best known for starting the Public Defender’s Office. Throughout her long career, Clara spent much of her career representing the poor, sick, and despairing clients. Foltz felt that the public prosecutors were usually skilled, experienced and were well paid. In addition, they had access to the manpower and investigative skills of law enforcement. Foltz believed that unless a defendant had equal representation, which could be furnished by a public defender, his or her constitutional presumption of innocence was worthless. In 1893, at the Chicago World Fair, she introduced the Public Defender Bill.

Two decades passed before the first Public Defender’s Office was established in Los Angeles in 1913. In 1921 California passed a statewide Public Defender bill. This proposal was subsequently adopted in all fifty states and was one of her greatest achievements.

Assistant District Attorney - In 1910, she was appointed to the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office, becoming the first woman Assistant District Attorney in the United States (1911-1913).

Suffrage – Clara continued to be active in the Suffrage Movement and authored the Women's Vote Amendment for California. She played a leading role in the campaign that secured the vote for women in California in 1911. According to the October 12, 1911, Los Angeles Herald, when California women finally won the vote, Foltz stood all night receiving congratulations as one of the few original suffragists who had lived to cast a legal ballot.

Foltz’ other accomplishments included becoming the first female clerk for the State Assembly's Judiciary Committee; the first woman appointed to the State Board of Corrections; the first woman named director of a major bank; and she helped pass California laws that allowed qualified women to act as administrators, executors and notary publics; owner and editor of the San Diego Bee daily newspaper; and ran for governor of California in 1930, when she was eighty-one years old. But of all the accomplishments unfulfilled, she longed to be a judge. But when the first judge was appointed in Los Angeles and California in 1931 (Georgia Bullock), Clara was already 82 years old – considered way past her prime for the 1930s.

So today when you think about Clara’s life, and the achievements she has made for Women’s Rights and the judicial system as a whole, you have to ask yourself, would there be a female attorney, judge, doctor, dentist, etc., if it wasn’t for that first bill – “The Woman’s Lawyer Bill” that started it all? Most likely yes, but probably later, and in a different form. But it was that bill and other proposed amendments that started the ball rolling in Los Angeles and California as a whole.

BARRIERS FOR WOMEN IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION

Becoming a lawyer is just one demonstration of hurdles that women had to overcome for their profession.

California State Bar Restrictions. Another restriction in becoming a lawyer for women in the 1800s and early 1900s was obtaining a State Bar license. But the State Bar requirement had to do with inheriting a very small “Y” chromosome. Yes, the requirement to take the State Bar exam in California was exclusive to “males only.”

Woman’s Lawyer Bill – It started with this bill. After being excluded from taking the California State Bar in 1877, Clara Shortridge Foltz authored the Woman’s Lawyer Bill, which replaced the word “white male” with “citizen.” It took Clara’s persistence and lobbying the state legislatures for over a year, but finally, on March 26, 1878, it was passed. On Sept. 5, 1878 (after a 3-hour oral exam), Clara Shortridge Foltz became the first woman admitted to the California bar – hence the first female lawyer in California.

The Barrier of Law School. Before the early 1900s, there were very few female attorneys practicing law in the United States. Not just because of hurdles and barriers that restricted women, but because at the time many males didn’t believe women should work – especially not as an attorney. (Note: according to U.S. Census, there were 5 women lawyers in the U.S. in 1870, 75 in 1880, and 208 in 1890). Many women tried to further their education by attending a law school. But law schools in the U.S. were few and far between. When California opened its first law school in 1878 – The Hastings Law School (today known as UC Hastings Law, San Francisco), it was a great opportunity for women to improve their skills – or so they thought.

Foltz-Gordon vs. Hastings Law School. Clara Shortridge Foltz and Laura Gordon (another female attorney) registered and attended three days of classes at the Hastings Law School before receiving a letter from the school’s registrar that said that they were restricting them from attending class at their school. In an 1879 article from the San Francisco Chronicle, it stated that the male students were disturbed by the noise the two female students’ petticoats were making during the class. Foltz and Gordon sued.

Their case made headlines throughout the state and the nation, and the San Francisco courtroom was filled with lawyers, reporters, and looky-loos who found two women arguing a court case was an amusing phenomenon. Clara argued 1) she met all the school requirements; 2) that Hastings was part of the University of California, which allowed women; and 3) it is a contradiction to have the Woman Lawyer Bill that allows women to practice law in California yet establish a school which excludes them.

Hastings argued that women should never be lawyers – that the study of law was not proper for women. They claimed that studying law would make women less womanly, and thus destroy the home. They also stated, “The peculiar qualities of womanhood, its gentle graces, its purity, its delicacy, its emotional impulses makes law unfit for women”. But Clara’s rebuttal was not only brilliant but demonstrated why she was known as a great orator: “claiming that broader education would make women less womanly and thus destroy our homes – that is not the legitimate effect of knowledge of any kind. On the contrary, a knowledge of law of our land will make women better mothers, better wives, and better citizens.”[2]

Foltz and Gordon won their case, but it was appealed. The case was later heard by the California State Supreme Court where they prevailed. Unfortunately for Foltz and Gordon, their money ran out before they were able to complete their studies. The first woman to graduate from Hastings in 1882 was Mary McHenry Keith.

California’s Revised Constitution. It is important to note that in 1878, while Clara Shortridge and Laura Gordon were fighting for the right to attend Hastings School of Law, they proposed an amendment to the California Constitution that stated: “A person may not be disqualified from entering or pursuing a business, profession, vocation, or employment because of sex, race, creed, color, or national or ethnic origin.” It was adopted and became part of the California Constitution in 1879.

CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT EIGHT – WOMEN’S RIGHT TO VOTE

Women promoting Suffrage on 4th& Broadway (1911) - *Photo: Security Pacific National Bank Collection / Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection*

Today, when we think of women’s right to vote, most of us think of the Nineteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that was adopted in 1920: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex”.

But in California, the right to vote for women came much earlier than in the rest of the United States. California’s first attempt to allow the women’s vote came in 1896. But unfortunately, the amendment lost by a wide margin. Most of the votes against suffrage came from northern California. All of the Southern California counties passed the amendment — with Los Angeles County giving it the largest favorable majority of the votes. But California didn’t give up.

With the increased population of women in Los Angeles, women began to organize and use their voices in ways not previously seen in the city. Women in Los Angeles started organizing women’s clubs, which originally were organized as social clubs but later became a primary club to organize suffragists.

Suffragists on the Move

In 1910 California began organizing again for a new election for October 11, 1911. Elizabeth Lowe Watson led the California Equal Suffrage Association in Northern California, while Southern California was led by two organizations – the Political Equality League led by John Hyde Braly, and the Votes for Women Club led by Clara Shortridge Foltz. There were other groups, teachers, college women, wage earners, and veteran suffragists – that also helped to carry out the vast statewide drive.

Suffragists rallied by speaking to voters on the street and in automobiles, and by holding mass rallies and small meetings. They addressed congregations, unions, factories, women’s clubs, and any audience they could find. Experienced speakers from other states came to work alongside local women, and supporters across the country contributed funds.

To evade speech ordinance laws that prohibited open speeches on public streets without a license, suffragists were creative in getting their message out. They organized picnic rallies in parks where they sang protest songs, handed out beverages and snacks, along with suffrage ribbon, buttons, and brochures. There was also one incident identified in the Los Angeles Times where Clara Shortridge Foltz ascended in a large hot air balloon and dropped yellow suffrage literature into a park in Los Angeles, while thousands of people from the park and the adjoining Baseball Park cheered and flocked to the literature.

The suffragists also took out full page ads in newspapers like this from the October 10, 1911, issue of the Los Angeles Herald:

The Los Angeles suffragists were very well organized, according to the Los Angeles Times. At any one time on election day, more than 800 women were at work for the suffrage cause in the city of Los Angeles. More than fifty automobiles were used for the cause to drive voters to the polls by the hundreds.

Anti-Suffrage Movement

But along with the many suffragist organizations, there were just as many anti-suffrage movements. The Los Angeles Times was “anti-suffrage” and had many editorials with this sentiment.

A Los Angeles Times editorial dated September 22, 1911, stated that: “The working man - whether he be a Republican, a Democrat or a Socialist - who walks along Broadway or Spring Street on Saturday afternoon and sees thousands of fashionably-attired girls and women of mature age parading in autos and making woman-suffrage speeches says to himself, ‘Are these butterflies to be entrusted with the task of making laws for me?’” The editorial also stated that “[t]he Times opposes woman suffrage because it does not believe in either the justice or the expediency of burdening the women of California with the duty of voting.”

The verdict is in…. - By 6 p.m., many votes were in. But it looked very grim for the suffrage amendment. In fact, many newspapers were already calling it a loss. It took three days to receive the final tally (no computers, and telephones in California were sparse until 1914). When the votes came in, the biggest opponents of the amendment came from Northern California counties: San Francisco, Santa Clara, Alameda, Santa Cruz, Marin, San Mateo, and Sacramento.

In the end, it was Los Angeles and other Southern California counties that took California over the top to pass the suffrage constitutional amendment.

WOMEN SERVING AS JURORS

First all-woman jury in California 1911 (Los Angeles) - *Photo: Library of Congress*

A major battle for women in the U.S. legal system was the right to serve on a jury. In early U.S. history, jury service was not always a universal right for all citizens as it is today. Jury service was restricted to only white males who owned property. Many courts throughout the U.S. were not fully integrated until recent history (1975). Most of the arguments against women serving on juries asserted two major arguments, 1) a courtroom was not a proper place for women, and 2) women had important duties at home such as caring for their husbands and children. A landmark decision was handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1975, they stated that all defendants had the right to a jury drawn from sources that represent all segments of the community.

The First All-Woman Jury in California (Los Angeles)

We do not know the exact date when juries integrated men and women together in California. We do know that in 1911 women were first allowed to sit on juries in Los Angeles. When women first began to serve as jurors, most California juries were separated by gender. Women served on cases with predominantly female defendants and men on cases with male defendants.

The media did not take kindly to women jurors in the early days. Two 1911 major newspaper headings read: “Woman’s Jury Fails to Agree on Eating,” and “Forewoman Wouldn’t Let the Others Dictate to Her, So They Wait for Luncheon.” An article published by the New York Times in November 1911 read as follows: “Not only did Los Angeles’s first jury of women, empaneled yesterday, fail to formulate a verdict, but it could not even reach an agreement on the question of where to dine. Defying her eleven sister jurors to convert her to their way of thinking, Mrs. Nora Danforth, forewoman of the jury, “hung” the jury for three and a half hours, and finally brought about their discharge because of a deadlock. The twelve women balloted and debated an hour and a half, then the time for luncheon arrived. Several declared that they would not be paraded through the streets to a restaurant, precipitating an argument that also resulted in a disagreement, and which the constable was called to decide.”

[1] Babcock, Barbara Allen. “The Trials of Clara Foltz”, Stanford University, 2011, p. 18

[2] Babcock, Barbara Allen. “The Trials of Clara Foltz”, Stanford University, 2011, p. 50.