Suffragists Oral History ProjectBurnita Shelton Matthews: Pathfinder in the Legal Aspects of WomenBurnita Shelton MatthewsWith an Introduction by
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This manuscript is made available for research purposes. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley.
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Preface to Suffragists Oral History Project
The Suffragists Oral History Project was designed to tape record interviews with the leaders of the woman's suffrage movement in order to document their activities in behalf of passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and their continuing careers as leaders of movements for welfare and labor reform, world peace, and the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Because the existing documentation of the suffrage struggle indicates a need for additional material on the campaign of the National Woman's Party, the contribution of this small but highly active group has been the major focus of the series.
The project, underwritten by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, enabled the Regional Oral History Office to record first-hand accounts of this early period in the development of women's rights with twelve women representing both the leadership and the rank and file of the movement. Five held important positions in the National Woman's Party. They are Sara Bard Field, Burnita Shelton Matthews, Alice Paul, Rebecca Hourwich Reyher, and Mabel Vernon. Seven interviews are with women who campaigned for suffrage at state and local levels, working with other suffrage organizations. Among this group is Jeannette Rankin, who capped a successful campaign for suffrage in Montana with election to the House of Representatives, the first woman to achieve this distinction. Others are Valeska Bary, Jessie Haver Butler, Miriam Allen de Ford, Ernestine Kettler, Laura Ellsworth Seiler, and Sylvie Thygeson.
Planning for the Suffragists Project and some preliminary interviews had been undertaken prior to receipt of the grant. The age of the women--74 to 104--was a compelling motivation. A number of these interviews were conducted by Sherna Gluck, Director of the Feminist History Research Project in Los Angeles, who has been recording interviews with women active in the suffrage campaigns and the early labor movement. Jacqueline Parker, who was doing post-doctoral research on the history of the social welfare movement, taped interviews with Valeska Bary. A small grant from a local donor permitted Malca Chall to record four sessions with Jeannette Rankin. Both Valeska Bary and Jeannette Rankin died within a few months of their last interviewing session.
The grant request submitted to the Rockefeller Foundation covered funding both to complete these already-recorded interviews and to broaden the scope and enrich the value of the project by the inclusion of several women not part of the leadership. The grant, made in April, 1973, also provided for the deposit of all the completed interviews in five major manuscript repositories which collect women's history materials.
In the process of research, a conference with Anita Politzer (who served more than three decades in the highest offices of the National Woman's Party, but was not well enough to tape record that story) produced the entire series of Equal Rights and those volumes of the Suffragist missing from Alice Paul's collection; negotiations are currently underway so that these in-party organs can be available to scholars everywhere.
The Suffragists Project as conceived by the Regional Oral History Office is to be the first unit in a series on women in politics. Unit two will focus on interviews with politically active and successful women who are incumbents in elective office today.
The Regional Oral History Office was established to tape record autobiographical interviews with persons prominent in the history of the West and the nation. The Office is under the administrative supervision of James D. Hart, Director of The Bancroft Library.
Regional Oral History Office
486 The Bancroft Library
University of California at Berkeley
Suffragists Oral History Project
BARY, Helen Valeska. Labor Administration and Social Security: A Woman's Life. 1974
MATTHEWS, Burnita Shelton. Pathfinder in the Legal Aspects of Women. 1975
PAUL, Alice. Conversations with Alice Paul: An Autobiography. 1975
RANKIN, Jeannette. Activist for World Peace, Women's Rights, and Democratic Government. 1974
REYHER, Rebecca Hourwich. Search and Struggle for Equality and Independence. 1977
The Suffragists: From Tea-Parties to Prison. 1975 Thygeson, Sylvie, "In the Parlor" Butler, Jessie Haver, "On the Platform" deFord, Miriam Allen, "In the Streets" Seiler, Laura Ellsworth, "On the Soapbox" Kettler, Ernestine, "Behind Bars"
VERNON, Mabel. The Suffrage Campaign, Peace and International Relations. 1975
FIELD, Sara Bard. Poet and Suffragist. 1979
Introduction
Late afternoon of any ordinary day, throngs of workers jam the sidewalks of downtown Washington, D.C., as they hurry toward bus stops and home--a workday completed. Amidst the humdrum of rush hour traffic along Pennsylvania Avenue, one could observe a small blue automobile pull up alongside the curb, short of the Thirteenth Street traffic light. A woman with a briefcase steps out. With a smile and a wave, she merges with the crowd moving toward the Connecticut Avenue Express Bus. Her ageless face, punctuated with youthfully bright blue eyes, is somewhat contradicted by her wavy, gray hair and matronly figure. She has the classic look of a "grandmother" who is returning home from an afternoon's shopping . . . except for the briefcase. She is Federal District Judge Burnita Shelton Matthews, who in 1949 became the first woman in the United States to serve on the federal trial bench.
Eight able lawyers have assisted Judge Matthews in the capacity of "law clerk" during her twenty-five years on the bench. All are women, which in itself is rather remarkable, and bears witness to Judge Matthews' unwaivering belief in the ability of women and to her efforts to provide opportunities so often denied them. "Besides," she remarked dryly to me one day, "if I had a male clerk, everyone would say some man was telling me what to do." Although in typical vernacular one would refer to this group as the judge's law clerks, the judge thinks of us as her "girls"--and so we are.
The "girls" have proved her confidence in them well-founded. Ellen Lee Park (1950-1956) is assistant chief of the Civil Division in the United States Attorney's Office. Sylvia Bacon (1956-1957)was appointed a judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in 1970, and was one of the women President Nixon considered for appointment in filling two vacancies on the United States Supreme Court in 1971. (The appointments ultimately went to Lewis F. Powell, Jr. and William H. Rehnquist.) Patricia Frohman (1957-1963) is an assistant United States attorney for the Civil Divisionin charge of claims.
Mary Margaret Burnett (secretary, 1960-1963; law clerk, 1963-1964) is in private practicein Florida. Bonnie Lewis Gay (1964-1966) holds the position of attorney-adviser in the Office ofthe General Counsel, United States Treasury. Barbara Susman Yaffe (1965-1966) practices witha private law firm in Ithaca, New York. Polly Wirtzman Craighill (1966-1968) is the executive director, Consumer Protection Commission for Prince George's County, Maryland.
Mary Giove Seaton and Margaret A. (Peggy) Deeds round out the group. Although not a lawyer, Mary left a twenty-four year career with the Department of Justice to become Judge Matthews' administrative secretary in 1966. Peggy Deeds enjoys unique status as one of Judge Matthews' "girls," being the only one who has never been on the Judge's staff. Peggy was a court reporter assigned to the Judge. She studied law at night. Through the efforts and persuasion of the Judge, Peggy began her work as an attorney in the Office of the Register of Wills, in which she eventually became the first deputy.
When in 1968 I interviewed for the position of law clerk, I met Judge Matthews for the first time. Although I knew her by reputation, I was hardly prepared for the warm and gracious lady who welcomed me into her chambers. We chatted the better part of an hour. Because there emanates from her such a sincere interest in the person she is talking with, her involvement converted an otherwise stereotype interview into one of the most delightful hours I've spent. I remember thinking afterwards that whatever the outcome, I would always treasure that hour. During the six years I have been with her, many memorable hours have been added.
As a private practitioner, Judge Matthews specialized in real estate transactions. Driving around town with her, I marvel at the storehouse of knowledge she possesses regarding the various sites and the people who have owned or occupied them. (We were driving around the back of the White House one afternoon when the Judge, pointing to what is now known as Jacqueline Kennedy's Rose Garden, recalled the spot as once having clothes lines from which hung President Harding's underwear.) Probably the most well-known site in which she was involved as an attorney was one owned by the National Woman's Party. She represented the party in a condemnation proceeding brought by the government to acquire it. On that site now stands the United States Supreme Court Building.
On becoming a federal judge, she curtailed her public activities in promotion of the Equal Rights Amendment. Although much sought after by national women's organizations, the Judge has refused their appeal to her to speak out for the amendment. She believes this would be an improper use of the power which a federal judge possesses, particularly where, as here, the judge is a woman. The impropriety of a judge's attempt to influence the passage of legislation stems from the basic function of the judiciary to interpret legislation after it is passed. She would never do or say anything which might so much as cast a shadow on her integrity as a judge. Consistent with her standard "NO" to the continuing requests, in 1973 when Bill Moyers' office called from New York inviting Judge Matthews to be a guest on his television program, "Bill Moyers' Journal," she instructed Mary Seaton to "very politely" refuse. Thirty minutes later, however, Bill Moyer himself was on the phone to speak with the Judge. To our surprise and delight, she
1. The transcript of "'Daddy Don't Be Silly'--A Case for Equal Rights" broadcast March 5, 1974, is on file at The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
On the bench Judge Matthews combines a brilliant mind with splendidly reliable instincts and a great deal of common sense. A leader, not a follower, she has never been reluctant to administer the law as she sees it, even when she has stood alone. It is legend that she has been the least "reversed" judge on the district court. Always a "working" judge, she has taken the cases as they came, seeking no favors and offering no excuses. A number of well-known persons have been litigants in her court, among whom were the late Senator Joseph McCarthy, Negro baritone Paul Robeson, labor leader James R. Hoffa, and pop singer Dick Haymes. In the 1960s there was talk of her being elevated to the Circuit Court of Appeals or even appointed to the United States Supreme Court. This came to naught, her age seeming to be the deterring factor.
In 1968 Judge Matthews assumed "Senior" Judge status. This was to give her a choice in cases, relief from some administrative obligations, and a chance to take things easier. Instead, she has added to her work load. In addition to her district court work, she has sat twice with the United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (the first woman to do so in the history of that court). During the past four years she has served by designation pursuant to statute on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Quite recently one of the circuit judges observed "if we had more judges on this court like Judge Matthews, we would get more work done."
Many portraits of past judges and a few present judges grace the walls of the Courthouse, and until last year, all were of men. On February 1, 1973, in the ceremonial courtroom of the United States Courthouse, Chief Judge John J. Sirica accepted on behalf of the District Court a portrait of Judge Matthews, painted from life by Miss Roma Harlan of the National Gallery in Washington. The portrait was commissioned by Judge Matthews' "girls," and Ellen Lee Park, whom we regard as our dean, made the presentation.
Today Judge Matthews' portrait hangs in her courtroom. At first I had mixed emotions about the portrait; partly, I think, because it seems to lack the liveliness, the humor, and the charm
Actually, the portrait reveals her to be a bit of a paradox--the severity of the traditional black robe, broken by the completely feminine white ruffles and lace at her throat and wrists. Always gracious, she enters her courtroom with a pleasant good morning, which just faintly hints at her Mississippi origin. But it is a very foolish attorney who comes before her underestimating her acumen or misinterpreting her outwardly mild manner. Several years ago an attorney made this mistake. Obviously drinking, he was quarrelsome and rude, sometimes quite overbearing. Throughout the trial the Judge said nothing about his behavior. Once the trial was over, however, she quietly called him before the bench in open court, enumerated each incidence of his misbehavior in court, and in her inimitable way, held him in contempt. That is the Judge of the portrait . . . sorry the incident arose, but firm in her conviction of what must be done and quite capable of doing it. The artist excelled in capturing the dignity of Judge Matthews and her great strength of character.
Ellen Lee spoke from the hearts of all of the "girls" when she presented "a truly great portrait and a fine likeness of a hard-working, conscientious Judge whom we love and admire." Judge Sirica responded: "The portrait is beautiful, as befits the subject. Therefore, Mrs. Park, I receive it graciously and officially on behalf of the court. And when others in times yet to be occupy our places, they can see what we had and what they missed."
Law Clerk
Washington, D.C.
Interview History
The significance of Burnita Matthews lies in her contributions as a jurist and her leadership in the struggle for women's equality, particularly the suffrage and equal rights amendments. The latter was the focus of our approach, as part of a series of interviews with women political leaders.
Mabel Vernon, whose own career as a suffragist is well-known, urged us by telephone from Washington on January 29, 1973, that Burnita Matthews' career be documented in our series. Alice Paul had similarly suggested that Judge Matthews is someone we should interview, particularly for her incredible volume of research after the suffrage battle when she and her aides reviewed each state's codes and drew up reforms to correct the existing inequities under the law.
Three months after the telephone conversation with Mabel Vernon, when we were meeting in Washington to finish her interview, Judge Matthews agreed to clear her calendar one Sunday afternoon for a taping session. It was April 29, 1973, almost her only free time for such an extra-curricular activity. We agreed upon a general outline beforehand, and when I arrived she was receptive and gracious, at once the hostess offering tea or coffee, and the competent interviewee. We set right to work in her spacious living room--my memory recalls quiet colors, beautiful traditional furniture, and generous windows overlooking the sunlight and trees of Connecticut Avenue. She dispatched the questions efficiently with conversational ease; in fact, we covered enormous ground in one short afternoon's taping.
She reviewed and annotated the transcript with the assistance of Fern Ingersoll, an interviewer-editor for the Regional Oral History Office who lives close at hand in Washington, D.C., and whose own account of her work with Judge Matthews follows.
Interviewer-Editor
Regional Oral History Office
486 The Bancroft Library
University of California at Berkeley
The Editing
When I began to edit the transcript of the interview between Judge Burnita Shelton Matthews and Amelia Fry, I listened to the tapes to fill in a few blurred phrases, and enjoyed hearing her strong, sure voice, realizing that others may someday derive pleasure from hearing the recording.
In the summer of 1974, I took the Judge the transcript, complete with my table of contents, subject headings, and several pages of clarifying questions. Outside the windows of her chambers in the United States Courthouse, there was the havoc of rebuilding Washington. Nothing could be more in contrast with the atmosphere of organized calm that prevailed within.
Because it was the lunch hour, the Judge herself welcomed me. She stood so straight that I thought at first this gracious person in the outer office must be the Judge's assistant--until I recognized the same soft, clear voice. Over a trim pink suit she wore a blue shawl which mirrored her sparkling blue eyes.
Several times as we talked she went to get a document we needed, always moving in and out of her office with quiet energy. Glancing around the room as I waited for her to return, I was delighted with two delicate china figures on shelves midway between two wide tiers of law books.
When I mentioned the University of Chicago Manual of Style which I had been using, with some modifications, as a guide for punctuation and capitalization, she laughed--as one with many concerns--and said that since legal style is so distinctive, she would leave these matters as my responsibility.
In the course of our conversation, Judge Matthews said she had a number of opinions to write for the court and would not be taking a vacation until they were finished. With increasing amounts of work before her during the next months, Judge Matthews nevertheless made time to go over the transcript completely.
After I left Judge Matthews, her law clerk, Betty Poston Jones, took me to the Judge's courtroom to show me her portrait and told me about the Judge as she had come to know her during their years of work together. Betty Jones, too, put pressing work aside to write the felicitous introduction to the transcript.
Several days after our meeting, I received from the Judge's administrative secretary, Mary Seaton, xeroxes she had made of the documents we had discussed. I have documented all of these in the transcript; many appear in the appendices. I would especially draw the reader's attention to the article in the appendix by Lee Berger Anderson, editor-in-chief of the Women Lawyers Journal (1973) . In the interview transcript Judge Matthews discusses at-length the legal constraints upon women in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, but because of her natural reticence to speak of her achievements, her own part in removing these constraints is minimized. It is more fully described by Anderson in “Judge Burnita Shelton Matthews: Lawyer and Feminist” .
Editor
Washington, D.C.
1. Family Background
I thought we would start with where and when you were born and who your parents were.
Matthews
I was born near Hazlehurst, Mississippi, on December 28, 1894. My father was Burnell Shelton and my mother was Lora Barlow. My mother was a college graduate, and there were not many woman who were college graduates in that day and time.
Fry
Where did she go to college?
Matthews
She went to college at Brookhaven, Mississippi. The college was Whitworth College, and it still functions. My father was a planter, but he also served as an elected official. He was clerk of the Chancery Court of Copiah County and also he was the tax collector of that county. The name of the county is an Indian name. We had Indians there in those days.
Fry
Oh, really. Did you see the Indians?
Matthews
Oh yes.
Fry
Did they go to school with you?
Matthews
No. They had their own school.
Fry
As you were growing up was your mother a teacher or did she stay home?
Matthews
No, she wasn't a teacher. She stayed home and looked after us. But my mother died early. She left several sons, but I was the only girl.
How many brothers did you have?
Matthews
I had four when my mother died.
Fry
Did this put you in the role of mother?
Matthews
Yes, it did, because I was the second oldest child.
Fry
How old were you then?
Matthews
I was about sixteen.
Fry
Had you always planned to go to college or not?
Matthews
I wanted to, but my father did not share my views. My father wanted me to be a musician. He wanted me to play the piano. After my mother died, he sent me to the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. I have a teacher's certificate from there. I taught piano for a few years. I had always wanted to study law. Then I decided that I would, but that didn't become a reality until later, after I left Mississippi. I was quite at home in the courthouse, because my father had his offices in the courthouse as an elected county official. And so I saw a lot of the law at that time. But, of course, he felt it would be better for me to be a musician.
Fry
Was this because you were a woman?
Matthews
I think so. I had a brother--Sidney--who was very gifted. He played and liked the piano, but my father didn't even want him to study the piano. My mother, while she was living, insisted that he study.
Fry
Your father wanted him to go into something more masculine?
Matthews
Yes, that's right. My oldest brother received a legal education and became a lawyer. He settled in Arkansas. He was a member of the legislature of Arkansas, and he was also City Attorney in Hot Springs for some years. His name was Allen D. Shelton. He's dead now. In fact, I'm the last survivor of my mother's children. I have one half brother, John L. Shelton, the son of my father's second wife.
Fry
As you were growing up, you had quite a lot of music in your family?
Yes. My mother played. My brother Sidney and I often played.
Fry
How did you have musical influences then? In Mississippi you wouldn't have concert artists coming through a great deal, would you? And you couldn't get phonograph records yet.
Matthews
No, you couldn't get phonograph records at that time, but later on you could. I can't remember when my mother didn't have a musical instrument. She had an organ and a piano. She played and sang, and I suppose we just got that from her; and, of course, in the community they had concerts. People would meet and sing.
Fry
What about the church? Were you active in the church?
Matthews
Yes, I was.
Fry
What was your church?
Matthews
My church was the Methodist Church. I was and still am a Methodist. My brother Sidney rang the church bell on Sundays. I played at church for the singing.
2. Law School
MatthewsIn World War I, I was supporting myself by teaching piano and also sight singing in a town in Georgia. I saw advertisements for people to work for the federal government during the war, so I took the examination for a clerkship. I passed. I really wanted to study law. Not many places had law schools in the South where I lived. I was offered a job, and so in order to study law I came here to Washington. I took a job with the government. I stayed with the government until I had finished law school in 1920. The law school that I went to was called the National University, but it no longer exists under that name. It was consolidated with George Washington University. So I'm recognized as a graduate of George Washington University.
Government Clerkship
FryWhen you said you got a clerkship, do you mean a law clerkship?
Matthews
No, at that time I wasn't qualified. I came here as a government clerk.
I might say, while I was working for the government, they so desperately needed people who did know something about law that they sent circulars around to all the heads of departments to find out whom they had in their departments who knew about law. So the head of the department that I was in submitted my name, and I tried to get in that department; but there were no jobs there open to women. I was told that those jobs were places for veterans who were coming home.
For many, many years they didn't give legal jobs to women. They excluded them. Later on, much later on, they did take women in positions as adjusters and as lawyers and in the Office of the General Counsel of the Veterans Administration. But it hasn't been so many years that a woman I know, who worked up the line to the next to the highest legal position, wasn't given the job when the vacancy came; and she should have had it. So then she left them. She is still living today. Her name is Mary M. Connelly. She's in private practice in Washington now.
Demonstrating for Suffrage
MatthewsWhile I was at law school I met a woman who was studying law. She was, I imagine, about in her fifties then. She told me about a woman's movement and the women who were working in that movement--the Woman's Party--that was promoting woman suffrage. Also, I saw on a sign along the sidewalk that the Woman's Party was going to have a mass meeting in the National Theater. I went to this meeting. The lady that I was telling you about--her name was Julia Jennings--said to me, "Will you go over and help on Sunday with the pickets at the White House?" So I did. I went a number of times, as many times as I could spare, when they did the picketing.
The Woman's Party headquarters at that time were facing that square in front of the White House where Lafayette's statue is standing. It was amazing in those
Fry
Including the law enforcement officials?
Matthews
Yes, including them! On one of those occasions when I wasn't doing anything but just carrying a banner, someone who was watching the parade came up and said, "What are you being paid for this?" They used to say things like that. Sometimes male parade watchers would try to take your banner from you. It wasn't at all unusual to have one of them try to take away your banner.
One Sunday [1919] I was there in front of the White House, and the picketing was going on. Mrs. Havemeyer [H.O.], who was an extremely prominent woman from New York--I think her husband had been involved in the sugar industry--did something in front of the White House; I think she lit a fire on the sidewalk.
2. On February 9, 1919, members of the Woman's Party burned a paper figure of the president. Mrs. Havemeyer attempted to make a speech and was arrested with other members of the Woman's Party. ( Inez Haynes Irwin, Up Hill With Banners Flying: The Story of the Woman's Party [ Penobscott, Maine: Traversity Press, 1964], p. 416 .) Ed.
Fry
When they were having the fires and burning the President's words.
Matthews
Something like that. She was arrested and taken off to jail. I don't know how long she stayed. At that time, if someone came up to you and asked you a question and you undertook to expound on the suffrage movement, then you were arrested. You were arrested for speaking without a permit to speak. So when anybody tried to get me to talk with them, I didn't talk, I didn't answer, because I was a law student; and I thought that if I got arrested and had an arrest record, it would be counted against me when I tried to get admitted to the bar. So I didn't speak at these rallies or marches.
Mrs. Anna Kelton Wiley was an extremely important woman in Washington because she was very active in civic affairs, and also her husband, Dr. Harvey Wiley, was the father of the Pure Food Law. Since she believed in woman suffrage, he encouraged her to go and do what she could for it. So she did. Mrs. Wiley was arrested. She was convicted. I think her conviction was for obstructing traffic. Alice Paul could tell you.
A number of them were according to the book [ Inez Haynes Irwin, Up Hill With Banners Flying: The Story of the Woman's Party ].
Matthews
Irwin's book [2nd ed.] tells about Mrs. Wiley. She appealed. Her husband encouraged her to appeal. The appellate court threw out the conviction.
Fry
Were you ever to do any of the legal groundwork in any of these cases?
Matthews
I was not, because at this time I was working all day and I was going to law school. I got there at six o'clock, and then I went to classes for two and a half hours, and after that I had to study. Then the next day began all over again. The only time I really had free was the weekends, Saturday and Sunday. Of course I wasn't admitted to the bar until the fall of 1920.
Fry
That was the same time that we
3. Research for Woman's Party on Discriminations
MatthewsYes, we got suffrage in August.
The Woman's Party in the spring of 1921, just after getting suffrage, had a meeting. I think that meeting was in the Washington Hotel. At that meeting they discussed where they would go after winning woman suffrage, and what they would do and so forth. Then, out of all of this came the decision to continue to work to improve the status of women. At that time Miss Paul thought that we ought to try to learn what the discriminations were against women in the different states. I don't know if you know this, but there were not too many women practicing law in 1920.
Passing the Bar Exam after Law School
FryI wondered about that. Did you have any trouble getting admitted to the bar?
Matthews
No. You could be admitted if you could pass the examination. When I took the bar examination here in Washington--I took it
The Woman's Party decided to go forward with trying to remove the remaining discriminations against women. As I said before, Miss Paul wanted to find out what these discriminations were. So, after I was admitted to the bar and had gotten an office close by the courthouse and was undertaking to get established, Miss Paul asked me to do things, look up these discriminations. For instance, if a woman came from Louisiana, Miss Paul would ask, "What are the discriminations in Louisiana?" The woman from Louisiana would usually say, "My husband says there aren't any."
Working to Eliminate Discrimination in State Laws
MatthewsOn one of these occasions Miss Paul asked me to look up the law in Louisiana. So I went to the library. At that time the Supreme Court was located in the Capitol. I went to the law library of the Supreme Court in the Capitol, because of course I didn't have an adequate law library to look up the laws of different parts of the country. I found that in Louisiana they had the Code Napoleon. The Code Napoleon said a lot of interesting things about women. It said something like this: "Men are capable of all kinds of engagements and functions. Women are disqualified from any civil function unless specifically authorized by law."
Fry
That's even worse than the English.
Matthews
They said a lot of other things too in the Code Napoleon.
Fry
Had Louisiana adopted this lock, stock, and barrel at the time?
Matthews
Yes. Louisiana still goes by the Code Napoleon. I don't mean
They had another interesting law that said something like this: "The child is under the authority of the father and the mother, but in case of difference of opinion the authority of the father prevails."
They had a lot of things in the code of Louisiana. There was a Mrs. J.D. Wilkinson who was a very prominent woman in Louisiana. She took many of the bills that I drafted for these particular things and got some of them passed.
In 1926 the Woman's Party released a pamphlet. It had pictures; and among other things, it had a list of the accomplishments of the Woman's Party in changing laws with respect to women. Many of those things in Louisiana that we were able to get passed were mentioned in the pamphlet.
New York is regarded as a progressive state. New York had a law that did not put the mother on the same footing as the father in regard to inheritance if they should have a child who died and left a fortune. The father was preferred over the mother. The Woman's Party worked for a change in that law, and they did get that changed. It was in the early twenties.
Fry
That was changed to equally divided inheritance?
Matthews
Yes. And right here in Washington they had a law that said that the father was preferred to the mother in inheritance. Then it said, "And so on without end, passing to the nearest male ancestor; and for want of the male, to the female." It took a long time in the District of Columbia to get that changed. It took about ten years. It wasn't passed until about 1935.
Fry
Did that have to be passed by Congress?
Matthews
Yes.
Fry
Why did it take so long?
One of the reasons was due to a congressman from Kentucky. He was very much taken with the law of Kentucky and the law of Virginia on descent and distribution. The law of Virginia on descent and distribution, I think, was written by Thomas Jefferson. A congressman from Kentucky, Judge Gilbert [Ralph Waldo Emerson] they called him, just took the law of Kentucky and put at the beginning, "Be it enacted." And then, without any effort to adjust it to the law of the District of Columbia, he introduced the bill in Congress to apply to the District.
The Woman's Party, together with the Women's Bar Association, proposed a bill to correct this situation. When our bill came up on the floor of the House, Judge Gilbert asked that our bill be laid aside, because he was working on a comprehensive amendment. I went to Judge Gilbert and told him that we were not interested in having a general revision of the law at this time, but we wanted simply to put women on an equal footing with men in the inheritance laws. I said, "Why don't you let our bill go through and then you can work on this general revision, because the bar [D.C.] is not ready for the general revision." The Bar Association of the District of Columbia wasn't even ready for the bill we were working on to change the law to have women equal under the inheritance law with men. The D.C. Bar wasn't even in favor of that. The title companies weren't for it. They said, "Looking up the records, it just means more people, and why should you put women in?"
Fry
Too many names in their filing cabinets.
Matthews
So then when Judge Gilbert managed to get his bill up before the committee, I think it was the Judiciary Committee (if not the Judiciary Committee, the District of Columbia Committee), then the Bar Association of the District of Columbia appeared and opposed it and said that they were for the one that we had been trying to get all the time. For years this thing was just at a stalemate because Judge Gilbert wanted the law of Kentucky and Virginia to prevail, and we were working just to get women treated right.
So finally I said to Judge Gilbert that I believed I would revise the bill. And I did. Then the commissioners of the District of Columbia agreed to back what I had put together, and it was passed in 1935. The passage of the measure required more than ten years.
Fry
Who worked on the legislation in New York?
One woman who worked on it particularly was Mrs. Smith [Jane Norman]. Mrs. Smith is deceased now. She was in charge of the New York measures. She received the bills, and she got them introduced. She arranged the hearings and the speakers. When this group of bills got into New York--the research department in which I was working prepared these bills and sent them to New York to Mrs. Smith--Mrs. Smith would arrange for their introduction there and to have them looked over by the people.
Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt was active in New York at that time, but instead of supporting these bills she was asking for a commission to be created to study the position of women. Mrs. Smith said, "We've already studied it. We've done that for several years now." And so the man in New York who was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee at that time, I think his name was Costello (I'm not sure of his rank; I didn't attend any of those hearings), spoke to Mrs. Roosevelt. According to Mrs. Smith, he said to Mrs. Roosevelt, "Why don't you take a position on some of these bills? Just to say, well you're not for any of them--that you want a commission--isn't enough. You know what you want on these bills. Well, why not act?"
The bills were for many things. Separate bills for separate ills. For instance: To give women the right to serve on juries; to do away with the discrimination against women with reference to the guardianship of their children; to straighten out the laws on descent and distribution so that women would have a status equivalent to that of men in the same relationship. So that went on for some time.
Fry
Did Mrs. Roosevelt ever come out publicly against any of these?
Matthews
Mrs. Roosevelt was never for the Equal Rights Amendment.
Now this comes some time later, but the Woman's Party in 1923 had a meeting at the same place where they held the first Equal Rights convention in 1848. It was in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1923. At that second Seneca Falls convention, the delegates voted to work for an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to give women equal rights with men. That's where it was adopted in 1923.
Prior to that meeting in 1923, Miss Paul had suggested that we work on a draft. She was very active in that. She asked me to look up all the words that she was using in the draft, to look for cases that would throw light on the phraseology.
Women and the Practice of Law
MatthewsIt wasn't until after the suffrage amendment was passed that some women could practice law. For instance, Delaware didn't allow women to practice law until 1920 when the suffrage amendment came in.
Fry
How did suffrage allow them to practice law?
Matthews
Since they could vote, there seemed to be no point in excluding them from practicing law.
Fry
You mean a new statute was passed?
Matthews
I don't know whether or not a new statute was passed. A lot of times women would say that under an existing law they were entitled to so and so. For instance, after the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, long before the suffrage amendment, women tried to get admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court. Myra Bradwell, I think her name was, tried to get admitted to the bar in Illinois. She claimed that under the Fourteenth Amendment she should be admitted. There were a lot of decisions holding that women could not be lawyers at common law and so women were turned down.
When a woman tried to get admitted to the bar in Wisconsin, she faced a remarkable decision. That decision was something to the effect that there are many callings for women which were suitable and proper, but that the law was not one of them; and that it was treason for women to undertake to invade the practice of law.
Fry
Treason?
Treason in the sense that she is trying to be something not appropriate to her sex.
Fry
Why didn't the Fourteenth Amendment cover equality for women? Why hasn't it been used this way?
Matthews
The women tried to use the Fourteenth Amendment, but against that background the common law on the subjection of women was advanced. Men just reasoned that the Fourteenth Amendment wasn't intended to apply to women.
Fry
Was there a problem up until this century of women not being defined as persons?
Matthews
A lot of people say that women were not persons. I don't think it has ever been held that women were not persons. The idea that was fostered is that given the background and under the circumstances it [women in legal work] isn't appropriate. For example, they have a law in Wisconsin called the Equal Rights Statute and that was passed after women got suffrage.
Fry
Right about 1920?
Matthews
I'm not sure. I think 1921 is right. What this law said was that women should have equal rights with men, except that it should not be construed to deny to women the special protection that they then enjoyed for the general welfare.
Fry
The reason I'm laughing is that it sounds so much like one of the riders that was put on just two years ago in Congress.
Matthews
What happened was that they had a law in Wisconsin that limited employment by the legislature to males. Clerks to a legislative committee, etc. had to be men. After this Equal Rights Statute was passed in Wisconsin in 1921, the women thought of course these legislative positions, which after all are very desirable positions, were open to them. But when women tried to get into these jobs, the state attorney general ruled that the Equal Rights Statute did not open these jobs to women, that the hours were long and sometimes ran into the night, and it was for the special protection of women that they not serve in such jobs.
In Massachusetts they had a statute about jury service which was general in language. But when women tried to be called for jury service, it was held that they were, nevertheless, excluded.
Fry
Was that the one in the 1890s?
Matthews
Yes, that sounds about the right time. Finally there was a pioneer woman lawyer here in Washington. Her name was Belva Lockwood. Belva Lockwood got a law passed that women could be admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court. And she was, I think, the first woman to be admitted to practice before the Supreme Court.
Now when I came to Washington and was going to law school, some of the professors told little jokes that would put women in their places, so to speak. There was a professor one day who was commenting on Belva Lockwood, the pioneer woman lawyer. At that time they had what was called common-law pleading. Under the system of common-law pleading, if you misconceived your remedy you were likely to be thrown out of court completely, because of very technical forms of pleading. Belva was in court one day. Something was wrong with the pleading, at least the judge felt there was. Belva rubbed her hands and said, "What shall I do? What shall I do?" Whereupon the judge, so the story goes, looked at her sternly and said, "Go out and get a lawyer."
That story was told in a lecture at the law school that I attended. But strangely enough I learned a little later that Belva Lockwood had quite a few Indian claims against the government, and that she had won them and had earned large fees. Also, when I got to know the women better who were here and who had known Belva Lockwood, they had a very high regard for her. She rode a bicycle, and that was an unheard of thing in those days. I think Belva Lockwood ran for the presidency at one time. I have a much better opinion of Belva Lockwood than I was led to believe was justified when I was going to law school.
4. Law School Described Further
FryDid you find that being a woman made it difficult for you at law school?
Matthews
I wouldn't say that it did. I might say that, when the marches and picketing were going on in connection with woman suffrage, there was a great deal said about them in law school by the students. Many of the students were then in uniform, in navy uniform, in army uniform. They were just getting out of their uniforms. This was in 1920. They had a lot to say about the marches and picketing. They didn't think that the women who were putting on this great campaign and bothering the President were very patriotic, and the women were greatly criticized. You would hear in the law school how the men felt about it. However, I was elected vice-president of my class. A very nice man got up and said that I was a member of the class and that I was a very earnest and capable student. He nominated me and I was elected. On the whole, the men were very nice to me, and many of them today are still friends of mine.
Fry
Were there many law schools at that time that you could not have gotten into because you were a woman?
Matthews
The law school that I went to had opened its doors one time way back yonder, and Belva Lockwood went there, to the very law school that I attended. But for some reason they closed their doors to women after they had opened them. The year I came to Washington was the first year that they had re-opened the school to women, but no one admitted that it was any re-opening. Nothing was said about that. You had to learn about it in another way. At any rate, that was the year that the doors were again opened to women. Women had been trying to get George Washington University to open its doors to them for a long time, but the university took the position that it would be distracting to young men if women were in the classes. Eventually, however, they did admit women.
In the year 1896, there were two women who decided that since universities didn't accept women as law students except at Howard University, they should form a law school for women. And they did in 1896. Those two women were Ellen Spencer Mussey and Emma Gillett. Mrs. Mussey got the "Spencer" in her name from that Spencerian type of handwriting. She was from that family. Her husband was a high-ranking official, I think he was a general--General Mussey [Reuben Delavan], they called him. At
Miss Gillett--there was no school near here that would admit white women to the law school--
Fry
You mean there was one that would admit black women?
Matthews
Howard University. They would admit white and black. Miss Gillett wanted to study law. Howard University was the only place she could go, so that's where she went. She graduated. Then these two women, Emma M. Gillett and Ellen Spencer Mussey, joined together and established, in 1896, a law school called the Washington College of Law.
Fry
Was this because they didn't want to go to Howard?
Matthews
Everything was segregated in those days, more or less. Howard University was financed by the federal government after the Civil War; it has always been financed by the government. At any rate, that was one place where women students could get in to study law. Miss Gillett went there, and there were some other women who went there too. I don't know their names.
Mrs. Mussey was the first dean of the Washington College of Law. Later on, they had any number of women who were deans. The college was always co-educational. From the beginning it was always open to both men and women. When Mrs. Roosevelt, the wife of the president, was here, she received an honorary degree from Washington College of Law.
By the way, I taught there for several years. I taught the Law of Evidence. They had a number of women who taught at the Washington College of Law. One of them who taught there was Mrs. Rebekah Greathouse. Mrs. Greathouse's mother was a sister of Dwight Morrow. That would make Mrs. Greathouse a first cousin to Mrs. Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Rebekah Greathouse was a graduate of the Washington College of Law. She is dead now.
In those days they didn't have the Association of American Law Schools. After some years this association was formed, and standards were established for law schools in the country. You had to do certain things and have certain professors that were full-time professors, and you had to have a library of such and such a capacity of volumes, in order to qualify for membership in this association of law schools. As a result of that,
Fry
I thought you said it was a part of George Washington University.
Matthews
No, I never said that. I said that the law school that I went to was the National University. The National University was consolidated with the George Washington University. The law school that Emma Gillett and Ellen Spencer Mussey started, called the Washington College of Law, finally went in with the American University, but on condition that the name selected by those two women, the Washington College of Law, would be retained.
During the Vietnam War there were a great many students, and so many of the colleges were over-crowded. They are not so much now [1973]. It was very difficult to get into the Washington College of Law or to get in the George Washington University Law School. To get into medical school was almost impossible. They don't have the facilities for all who want to go. What would you like to talk about now?
5. Equal Rights Amendment: Wording and Early Struggles for Support
FryI was going to pick up on that resolution that was passed at the Seneca Falls conference. I know that you were one of the ones who helped figure out the wording of the Seneca Falls resolution. It's interesting to me that the way the Equal Rights Amendment was worded at first was that "Men and women shall have
3. "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." Ed.
Matthews
I think that particular wording was arrived at because Miss Paul liked it. It was very clear. "Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction." At that time there were some foreign countries that had provisions in their constitutions for equal rights for men and women. In this article [ “Women Should Have Equal Rights With Men: A Reply” ] that I wrote in the American Bar Association Journal [ vol. 12 (1926) ],
4. On file at The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Miss Paul later came to feel that the Equal Rights Amendment should be worded more like the suffrage amendment. I think the suffrage amendment says "the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex." It's sort of the same thing.
Fry
The Equal Rights Amendment was revamped in the early forties, wasn't it?
Matthews
I never regarded this revamping as too important. I just felt that by the time we had enough strength to get the amendment submitted by the Congress, perhaps we would have thrashed out whatever was the best form. Miss Paul has always been very much in the background of all of that. I would say that whatever she says about it would be the best source for you.
Fry
Do you know why they revamped it in the early forties?
Matthews
Miss Alice Paul, who drafted the amendment, agreed to revise the wording of it. In the early days of the work for the amendment, I used to go to all of those hearings on it in Congress. I used to answer the opposition. They had quite a few women from a lot of different places who would speak. Usually what I did was to answer the opposition, to tell why we thought we ought to have an amendment to the Constitution rather than have a specific bill for specific ills.
I might say that in those years we were always trying to get additional support for the amendment. In the year 1934 I received an invitation from the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the largest group of organized women in the United States. They were going to have their annual meeting in Hot Springs, Arkansas. This group also had a legislative representative who personally was interested in the amendment. I
5. Judge Matthews' speech made at the council meeting of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, May, 1934, was printed in Equal Rights, August 18, 1934 . See appendix.
Then in 1935 we had the annual meeting of the National Association of Women Lawyers, and they endorsed the amendment.
Fry
The Equal Rights magazine, the issue of September 8, 1934 , with you on the cover because you were the new president of the National Association of Women Lawyers, lists you at that time as general counsel of the National Woman's Party.
Settlement for the "Old Capitol"
MatthewsThere came a time when the government wanted the building of the Woman's Party. They had a building which was called the Old Capitol.
Fry
It had at one time been a capitol?
Matthews
It was never officially owned by the United States, but during the War of 1812 the British marched in. There was very little opposition. The British burned both the Capitol and the White House, not to any great extent, but enough so that sessions could not be held in the Capitol. The citizens of Washington didn't want Congress to move away. So in order to have a place for them, they erected this building (the Woman's Party building). The building was on First Street facing the Capitol, right where the Supreme Court is now. The building was afterwards always known as the Old Capitol. President Monroe was inaugurated there. Congress was housed there until the Capitol was restored. Congress then moved back into the Capitol. During the Civil War the Old Capitol was still there. Prisoners were kept there. Mrs. Greenhow [Rose O'Neil], who was a spy for the Southern forces, was imprisoned there. Her picture was made outside of the building.
The government filed the suit, and the Woman's Party had to defend it. Wardman testified for me, and then a strange turn of events occurred. The government claimed that the building wasn't really the Old Capitol because the Old Capitol was torn down. And even if it was the Old Capitol, said the government, it had been changed so it had no historical value. Another thing they said was that it was laid in flemish bond. This referred to a particular way of doing the brickwork. After the government put on their testimony that it was laid in flemish bond, and they had produced a picture from which you couldn't tell very much, I went around through town with Miss Maud Younger, who worked with me on the case. We found the man who inherited the Civil War collection of photographs by Brady [Mathew B.], the celebrated Civil War photographer; and in his collection we found a picture of Mrs. Greenhow taken while she was a prisoner in the Old Capitol. The picture was made of her standing on the outside of the building. There, as plain as could be, you could see that the bricks were not laid in flemish bond but in common bond. So I produced that picture in court so that the jury could see.
We had a very interesting time. There was a senator from Arkansas, Senator Caraway [Thaddeus H.], who was very much interested in historical buildings. He came down and testified. There was another man, Congressman Rathbone [Henry Riggs] from Illinois, who was interested in history. (It was one of his relatives who was an officer at the time Lincoln lived. This relative was with Lincoln and his wife in that box in Ford's theater when the tragedy occurred.) This Congressman Rathbone was a witness at the condemnation trial. Although the jury didn't divide their award into elements, like so much for the land and so much for the building and what not, I'm sure they included something for the historical value of that building.
A bill was introduced in Congress by some of these people that I have mentioned--I'm not sure whether it was Senator
Fry
Why couldn't they have taken something less historic?
Matthews
Well, that's what we thought, but the government wanted that building, and so they took it. There was a lot of land there. Mrs. Belmont [Alva] had hoped that we would put up a fine building on this land that women could come to from all parts of the world. The government's lawyer, Mr. Glassie, said that I had had a picture taken of the garden of the Woman's Party property with flowers and trees and shrubs, and that I had made it look like the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris.
Fry
Trick photography!
Matthews
Well, it wasn't, but that's how he explained it. Anyway, we had an interesting time.
Purchase of Belmont House
FryDid you get what was considered a good settlement?
Matthews
The Woman's Party considers that all its property is very valuable, and today you wouldn't think it was a good settlement. But at that time it was a few hundred dollars short of being $300,000.
It enabled the Woman's Party to take the money and buy other property--Belmont House. There was a coach house connected with the Belmont House and it was made into a very nice library on the ground floor. Miss Du Pont, of the Du Pont family from Delaware, was the architect for the library. Now the basement of this house was large enough to have filing rooms and cabinets
The National Woman's Party bought Belmont House for $100,000, but they had to spend some money to put it in condition. They put it in first-class condition. It was gone over thoroughly from top to bottom. It was beautifully restored, refurbished and all. That was in 1929, forty-five years ago. Today it needs a lot of things done. Now again the Woman's Party has to fight off the government all the time to keep the Belmont House, because there have been a number of bills to take this property the Woman's Party has. The government did take two houses, the two residences that the Woman's Party had on the same side of the street on which the library was located. The library was made out of the coach house, as I said before.
Fry
The mentioned two houses were for the Senate Office Building parking lot, wasn't it?
Matthews
Yes, you might say so.
Fry
I guess during Alice Paul's efforts to get this named a national historical monument by the Department of Interior you were already on the bench, weren't you?
Matthews
Yes, I didn't have anything to do with that. Mrs. Belmont had an idea that we would take the site of those two houses and we would build a small auditorium there, and we could have meetings in it and other people could use the auditorium for meetings too. We could have offices over there and use the Alva Belmont House for special occasions. Now those two houses have been taken down by the government.
Fry
I guess I've always seen it, in that location, as an excellent place for any kind of center for work for women's rights, particularly for lobbying on whatever bills happen to be going through Congress.
Matthews
Sometime there's very little notice. Miss Paul always wants us to hang on to it, hang on to it. But the Alva Belmont House is getting old. The building is spoken of in connection with Lord Baltimore. He is said to have had something to do with it. I believe there was someone in the Baltimore family who married into the family that had the building when the British
Fry
It's a fascinating house. I'll be glad when we can stay there again.
Matthews
Have you ever stayed there?
Fry
Yes, when I can. Right now it's closed. You can't use the library either.
Matthews
A woman called me from Wisconsin, a woman lawyer, and told me she was assistant to the attorney general of Wisconsin. I didn't know her at all. She wanted to get something out of that library. I told her that if she wrote she would get it in time. She did write, and she got a reply.
When she called me, she spoke of a case that she was handling for the attorney general of Wisconsin. He wanted to take the position that a married woman must take her husband's surname and she could not continue to use her own. This woman lawyer was opposed to that--she wanted materials on a contrary position. She told me that she had heard that I had once written a brief on this subject. I told her that I was sure that I had, but that I had no copy. I don't remember what I said in the article, but I was sure that I had written one. She was trying to get it. She later told me that she got the article and that it was something published in Equal Rights.
I had my secretary call up the Woman's Party headquarters one day and ask for something that Abigail Adams had said to her husband, John (the president of the United States). Abigail had said to him, "I charge you will remember the ladies; and if you don't, the ladies will foment a rebellion." The lady who was in the library at Belmont House sent it. The truth of the matter is that Mrs. Belmont gave all of her books to that library.
6. Final Meeting of the Woman's Party as a Suffrage Group
FryI'm going to go back to the final meeting of the National Woman's Party as a suffrage group in February 1921. Someone told me that in the discussions about where to go from here Jane Addams spoke for merging with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Do you remember anything about that?
Matthews
No. I wasn't cognizant at that time of that peace and freedom movement. I never belonged to any organization that was interested in peace and freedom and so on. The only thing I remember at all about that meeting was that it was held in the Washington Hotel. They had a discussion about just what to do now that suffrage had been won and where they would go from there and what they would do. This thing [ERA] may have come up. I don't know. I don't know who would have a report on that.
Fry
That must be somewhere in their records. I was intrigued that this was ever even considered right at that moment.
Were you on the delegation that went to see President Harding?
Matthews
Yes, I was.
Fry
That was April of that same year [1921].
Matthews
We went to see him, and I did have a picture of the group that went to see him. I don't know if I could find it now; but I remember that Mrs. Battelle, a very wealthy, prominent Ohio woman was there. (They had a Battelle Foundation out in Ohio that gave a lot of money for charitable causes.) I believe she was the one who got the appointment for us to see President Harding. I know we were in the garden where one of the pictures was made. I remember they had a picture of that in the movies later on, in the newsreel. I saw it once when I went to the movies.
Fry
I'm a little puzzled about why you went, because according to my chronology this is before a resolution was passed for the Equal Rights Amendment and all that.
Matthews
I could be wrong about the date, but I think that was the date
7. ERA: Endorsement by the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs and the National Association of Women Lawyers
FryLet's go back to your part in getting such groups as the National Federation of Business and Professional Women to support ERA.
Matthews
The Equal Rights Amendment was supported by many business and professional women. They felt that it was harmful to women to have labor legislation that put them in a class by themselves. They felt that it would be better if they had labor laws based on the nature of the work and not the sex of the worker. For a long time there were groups in the National Federation of Business and Professional Women who took that position on this labor question. Mrs. Jane Norman Smith in New York, whom I mentioned to you was handling the legislation regarding rights of women, was also working on groups of business and professional women to try to get their support for the Equal Rights Amendment. She wrote me a letter, I think it was about in the early part of 1937, and told me that she thought these groups were very close now to coming in to support the Equal Rights Amendment.
There were women in the National Federation of Business and Professional Women who were not for the amendment. One of them was Miss Charl Williams who was the president just prior to the 1937 election. She was from Tennessee. Anita Pollitzer and I were invited to the annual meeting of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs which was held in Atlantic City in 1937. One of the reasons why we were invited to speak was that Mrs. Roosevelt was sponsoring something called the Women's Charter. This Women's Charter was supposed to promote equal rights for women except where women should have
Somewhere in Equal Rights there is supposed to be a statement about what I said on this occasion.
6. “Equality Versus Protection. Speech against the Women's Charter delivered before the Biennial Convention National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, Atlantic City, New Jersey, July 23, 1937” . Reprinted from Equal Rights, August 15, 1937 . See appendix.
At that time I had been a member of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women. They didn't have any organization here in Washington; and I had joined the one just over the line in Virginia, in Arlington or Alexandria, one of them. Then I found it was such an effort to get back and forth to those meetings that I dropped out. When it was organized here in Washington, all of the people who were for protective labor legislation were the ones who got in on the ground floor. So when they got in, they didn't invite the ones who were for equal rights. But we did join later on.
At any rate, that's how the endorsement came about in Atlantic City in 1937.
In 1935 we got the endorsement of the National Association of Women Lawyers of the amendment. Mrs. Clarence Smith in New York was just overjoyed because this was a particular project
8. Protective Legislation: Harmful Effects
MatthewsOne of the points that the opposition stayed with was the business about the protective labor legislation. Now you know the person who was the head of the Women's Bureau in Washington was Mary Anderson. Mary Anderson was all for protective legislation for women.
About this time the question came up of the charwomen who were working at Harvard University. Massachusetts had a minimum wage law, but it wasn't of the type that many other places had. In effect, it was that if a person didn't pay the right minimum wage, the fact would be advertised in the paper. A board passed on what was the right wage--I think it was 35 cents an hour, somewhere along there. Some women had worked there for fifteen years. One woman had worked almost twenty years. Do you know that Harvard University wouldn't pay that few cents differential to those women? They fired those women; and they gave their jobs--do you know to whom?--to men who were willing to work for that 35 cents; or whatever it was an hour they were paying them at that time.
You remember Heywood Broun, don't you? His wife, his first wife, Ruth Hale, was a good friend. Her son, you know, is well known as Heywood Hale Broun. He's on television for sports.
Fry
So he took his mother's name. Wasn't she the one who was campaigning for women to keep their own names?
Matthews
Oh sure. She belonged to them. At any rate Heywood Broun wrote a book. I have a copy somewhere of what he wrote about this law, this minimum wage law.
Another point is that women who belonged to the union, the American Federation of Labor, were working in newspaper offices. A law was passed that said women couldn't work at night. When this law was passed and women couldn't work at night, they lost their jobs. Under the union rules, seniority had something to do with picking the particular shift you would have. So when this law was passed, the women were all thrown out of work and
There's no question but that laws were passed for the purpose of doing away with competition from women.
Fry
The whole character of the controversy over women's rights seemed to change during the Depression, according to the issues of Equal Rights that I read. There was an awful lot about the NRA [National Recovery Administration] codes.
Matthews
Not only that, but at one time there was some proposal that a husband and wife couldn't both hold government jobs. At that time Garner [John Nance] from Texas was the vice-president. He had his wife working in his office at a salary. He thought that was perfectly all right. But at the same time he wanted to put other women out. At that time I represented a woman who had some small position, I think, in the Government Printing Office, and her husband didn't work for the government but was in the armed forces. She was fired and had her job taken away from her under this law. Finally a government workers' council was organized which fought this law and finally got rid of it. But it was one of the things that we struggled over in those years.
Fry
I noticed here on a note that on December 28, 1935 there was a married person's clause called Section 213.
Matthews
That's what I'm talking about.
Fry
In this case, the National Woman's Party called a Sixth Eastern Regional Conference of the National Woman's Party to help pass a bill HR 5051 to nullify this Section 213 of the Economy Act.
Matthews
Congress finally got rid of it in that. They did away with it. A lot of husbands and wives were affected by that.
Fry
In the East here there was that funny business about the interstate tax which got around the NRA regulations. There were laws regulating wages and hours of women but not of men. That was part of NRA as first drawn up. I don't know whether that lasted or not.
Matthews
I don't remember too much about the NRA, but they had some cases that dealt with the NRA in court. I think some aspects
Fry
I was wondering if you were in any of the Woman's Party groups that was attending all the hearings for the two hundred plus codes that were being developed in the early days.
Matthews
I remember that when I was president of the National Association of Women Lawyers, we had an article in our journal on the codes.
7. Anderson, Mary. “Sex Differential in Minimum Ratio under NRA Codes” , Women Lawyers' Journal 11 (1934): 2, p. 29 . Includes a very complete table of NRA and AAA approved codes that set lower wage rates for women than for men (p. 57). On file at The Bancroft Library.
Fry
That would be very good. Later on Jane Norman Smith said, in September 1934, that the codes applied to all workers, that wage scales for women were lower than those for men; men were included in the wages and hours regulations though. And she said, "On the one hand the administration has established codes embodying the principal of equality of men and women, and at the same time it's using its powerful influence to create laws which would deny that principle."
The latter might refer to these interstate compacts that were being allowed. But you don't remember having worked on that?
Matthews
No, I don't remember having worked on that.
9. Detours from ERA: Individual State Legislation
FryDid you notice any general slump in activities for feminism in general, equal rights?
Matthews
When they were working for the Equal Rights Amendment, these agitations about women's jobs and women being thrown out of jobs were just little detours. And there were always detours
There were teachers who felt they were targets of discrimination. We got bills through a number of states providing that in teaching there should be equal pay for equal work. We got such a law through in Maryland, we got such a law through in New Jersey, and in New York.
Fry
Was this the National Woman's Party that was working in the individual states like this?
Matthews
Yes. They started right after the suffrage amendment was adopted. They voted to continue to work to improve the status of women. Then they began finding out what the laws were, getting bills drawn up. A lot of times there were women in the states who knew what the laws were, knew what had to be corrected.
I remember that one time I went all the way to Michigan--the women there wanted someone knowledgeable about a bill that was designed to get full contractual rights for married women. If a woman were not married, she could just contract freely except insofar as the labor laws were concerned. But when she was married, it was a horse of a different color. In the state of Texas and in a number of other states, if a woman married and wanted to engage in business, she had to go into court. Her competency would be enquired into, and then she might be allowed to be what is called a free trader. When Mrs. Ferguson [Miriam A.] was elected governor of Texas, she went into court and said that she would like her disabilities as a married woman removed in order that her contracts as governor might not be called into question. And this was done! The court gave her what she asked for.
Fry
Is that what Michigan had?
Matthews
Michigan had just a simple bill to allow married women freedom to contract. You know very often a woman couldn't be surety or guarantor and this or that or the other thing; and many people would say, "Why does she want to be a guarantor to anybody anyway?"
Well, there were many reasons. Suppose you had a son that you wanted to send to college and he didn't have much money and you wanted to go on his note. He was twenty-one, and you could be a guarantor in some places like Mississippi
It just seemed strange to me that the lawmakers thought they shouldn't allow women freedom to contract in Michigan. One man in the legislature got up and said that women in Michigan were going about their duties, preparing their evening meals, and had no idea what terrible things this bill proposed to do to them. Why it would allow them to contract like any other person could! When the legislators didn't want to give the wives something, they made the husbands out as awfully bleak. They said a husband would get his wife to sign his contracts and liabilities.
Some states, Florida for instance, were actually saying that a married woman's promissory note was just like a blank piece of paper. It had no validity at all.
Fry
Really!
Matthews
Oh yes. They said that it's all down in black and white. In Michigan women felt that they wanted to have freedom to contract the same as anyone else. They lost it. It was funny to me because Mississippi had this long, sweeping provision that a married woman could contract freely, the same as if she was unmarried. They put it in their law! Not only that, Tennessee came along and copied that law. They had the same law there. But you couldn't make any impression on the men in Michigan. They just felt they had to protect the women from the capacity to contract.
Then there was the problem of community property--as in Nevada.
Fry
Isn't that the thing that the western states inherited from the old Spanish law?
Matthews
Not only Spanish law, but the Code Napoleon too. Nevada had a rule that after marriage whatever is gained by the labor of the husband or wife belonged to both. For instance, Mary Pickford: her income when she was married, was community income. It belonged to her and her husband. What he earned belonged to the two of them too. But the darndest thing was that California never wanted actually to give the married woman any real right in community property. Oh yes, that's true.
At first they said, "Oh yes, it's community property, but the husband is head and master of the community. He controls the money and the income." He did all of that. Then they got around to saying that the husband's right to the community property was an absolute right, but that the wife's right was an expectancy like the right of inheritance.
California didn't want the wife to have to pay any income tax on community income. The question finally got to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court very properly said, "It's just an expectancy. It's not an absolute interest." Then California came around and said she should be exempt from the tax out there. California was still reluctant to give the wife an absolute interest. They finally passed a law, however, that said that the wife has a present existing interest in the community property. Then when they did that, they gave the women the benefit.
Fry
And the men didn't have to pay full income tax.
Matthews
The men didn't have to pay full income tax, and when the man died she didn't have to pay the full tax on the property; but half of it belonged to her, and therefore he would have to pay on her half when she died. There were a lot of other things.
But going back to Nevada, I was going to tell you about the senator from Nevada.
Fry
Pittman [Key]?
Matthews
No, Pittman is a Mississippian.
Fry
He wound up as a senator from Nevada?
Matthews
Yes, he did. He went out there.
Fry
Did you know him?
Matthews
Yes, he was here [Washington] a long time. There were a lot of men from Mississippi who went West and came back to Congress representing the western states.
Nevada didn't even require the wife's signature to give away community property. So a senator decided he would give an opera house that he owned to the city, but his wife said, "No, I'm not willing to give that opera house to the city."
She contested it, and Nevada didn't do a thing but say that he was within his rights. He was the head and master of the community property. So what good did it do the wife to have an interest in the community property? Now the laws have been bound a little tighter, and more and more individual rights have been granted to women.
There was one case in California where a woman tried to divorce her husband on the ground that he didn't support her. It developed that she had worked and he had allowed her to keep her wages. It was held that since he was entitled as head and master of the community to have her wages and he allowed her to keep them, he had in effect supported her; so she didn't get the divorce.
There's a lot of history to this community property thing. There are about eight states that have the community property law. But now I think that presently in California there has to be a consideration for any disposition of community property; and if there isn't, the wife can retaliate by trying to upset it. And I think that now Nevada probably has something, too, that's different from what I described; however, what I stated was an actual case.
Fry
Was that about the thirties that the senator wanted to sell his opera house?
Matthews
I'm not sure exactly what year that was, but I have that written up in a pamphlet.
10. Development of Burnita Shelton Matthews' Work
FryI wish you would give me the general context in which you worked with all these cases. You had a law office, a private law office, here in Washington; is that right?
Matthews
Yes. Miss Paul, right after the meeting in the spring of 1921, would ask me if I had time to go to the library and look up something for a particular lady who was here in Washington, about this or that bill and the law of her state, much like the Louisiana one that I was telling you about. So I did. I wasn't very busy then--I had just started practicing law, and I was right there at the courthouse. But the judges sometimes would appoint lawyers to cases in which they could make some
Finally, though, Miss Paul would ask me to do more and more, and it got so I just couldn't give so much time. So she engaged me to oversee this work. In the beginning the Woman's Party didn't have anybody to oversee. There was a Sue White who had looked up a few things for them, but she was working for Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee at that time. So I started being the overseer. This was in the late fall of 1921. In 1922 Miss Paul was extremely anxious to get the material together. As you know, research is very slow. So she engaged a lot of women lawyers, about ten I think. I supervised all of these girls who worked on it. As we worked we assembled much material together, all in an effort to determine what course we should take, what laws we should work on, etc. I had a lot of time, as I said, so I did that for several years.
Then I told Miss Paul I'd like to get my own practice of law started and spend more time on that. I did and spent a lesser amount of time with the Woman's Party. Yet I continued working on women's rights even when I severed that connection completely. I still helped out. I went to the hearings on these different bills.
The statements of Burnita Shelton Matthews, chairman of the Lawyers' Council of the National Woman's Party, and of several other prominent women, at three such hearings, are contained in the following documents which are on file at The Bancroft Library.
U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Amendment to the Women's Citizenship Act of 1922, and for Other Purposes: Hearings on H.R. 14684, 14685, 16303, 71st Cong. 3d sess, 17 December, 1930, and 23 January, 1931 .
U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Relating to Naturalization and Citizenship Status of the United States, and Relating to the Removal of Certain Inequalities in Matters of Nationality: Hearings on H.R. 3672 and 77, 73rd Cong., lst sess, 28 March, 1933 .
Then when the property of the Woman's Party was condemned, I think in 1927, I represented not only the Woman's Party but numbers of other people who owned pieces of property in that same condemnation. There was a block and a half that was taken by the government. The Woman's Party didn't own the whole property. They had the corner, where the Supreme Court is now. They had the corner of what at that time was A Street and First Street. On First Street they owned everything on down to a building that Mrs. Belmont owned. And I represented Mrs. Belmont in the condemnation. Then beyond Mrs. Belmont was the Congressional Apartments, a rather large apartment house. Then I represented some people on East Capitol Street. Miss Maud Younger was in that. She had a house on East Capitol Street. I represented her, and I represented a Mrs. Legare O'Bear.
Subsequent to that there were other condemnations in the area, separate and later. One of them was for an addition to the Library of Congress, that's the big white building in back of the Library of Congress. I represented a lot of people in that condemnation suit.
Then I began representing a great many people in other condemnations. There was a condemnation at the foot of the Capitol. I represented the owners in that case. I was always interested in land law. Some people think it's a very dry subject.
Fry
I think that's fascinating.
Matthews
It's interesting in a way. I had a lot of people come to me from different parts of the city, and I handled their cases.
I had a younger brother who was a lawyer here. I brought him up here from Mississippi. He was not a lawyer when he came; he was just out of high school. When he came, he told me he wanted to be a banker; but he soon got tired of working in the bank because he became aware that every time there was an opening that was a worthy one, it was filled by some one of the officers who had a nephew or son or somebody whom he wanted to place in a position of importance. So he finally decided he would study law. He went to law school to study law. He graduated and finished the bar exam about 1931. He became interested and involved in land law.
Fry
Was he in your office?
He was for awhile. But I had a teacher when I was in the law school who was very courteous to me and very fond of me. He was a man who had a tremendous amount of law work that dealt with land and receiverships and things like that. I felt I didn't have enough business in my office to give my brother full-time work. So I asked my former law instructor to take him. He didn't take him immediately, but about six months later he did. My brother was with him for some time. And by and by he became so knowledgeable and was so pleasing that most of the calls that came into the office were for him. This was the youngest child of my mother. (His name was Edwin Shelton.) He died in 1972 in August. It seems amazing that I am still living and he is dead. He was a very successful lawyer in that particular field.
Fry
What was the name of your law firm?
Matthews
It was called Matthews, Berrien, and Greathouse. I spoke to you about Rebekah Greathouse. Both of those women are dead now.
Miss Laura M. Berrien was an older person than I. She was active in the Woman's Party too, and was a very loyal member. She was a tax lawyer. She held a high-ranking position in the Bureau of Internal Revenue, at that time about the highest of any that a woman had held. But when Mr. Franklin Roosevelt came into office as president of the United States, a great many people were fired. "Fired" is not really a good word here. The term used was "reduction of force," and this was done in order to get their jobs to give to someone else who was waiting for them. When Miss Berrien left Internal Revenue as a result of this "reduction in force," she came into my law office.
Mrs. Greathouse was an assistant United States attorney. After she left the United States Attorney's Office, she came in with me too. She had a husband who was a chemist. He accepted a position in New Orleans. Since she always put her husband first, ahead of everything, she went with him to New Orleans.
Fry
Where did Mr. Matthews [Percy Ashley] come into your life?
Matthews
We went to high school together.
Fry
Oh, that early!
Matthews
That early. I met him there.
When were you married?
Matthews
We were married just about the time the war came on. But he immediately enlisted in the service and went away. He didn't show up again until long after the war was over, the First World War.
Fry
You say, "He didn't show up again." You mean he stayed in for a long time.
Matthews
He was in for quite awhile. He went into the service in 1917. War was declared in 1917, and I think he came back maybe in 1919, or it might have been 1920. It was a little while before the government brought all the servicemen back home.
Fry
When he came back, you were involved in law school and suffrage activities.
Matthews
I was. He was already a lawyer. After I finished the teacher's course at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, I taught for several years. All this time that I was teaching, he was going to law school. So he was a lawyer before I was.
Fry
Did you practice together?
Matthews
No, we never practiced together. He was interested in different types of cases from what I was. So therefore we never practiced together.
Fry
Was he here in Washington?
Matthews
Yes, he was, sometimes. He was in the Judge Advocate General's Department. He was a judge advocate in World War II. Of course he was away a long time then. He was sent abroad and was there for many years. After the war abroad was over, there were people from the Judge Advocate General's Department overseeing foreign areas that the United States had taken until these areas could be turned over to the proper occupation forces.
Fry
I get the idea then that really you were able to function rather independently.
Matthews
Yes. I had no children and I had this brother whom I was telling you about. He was here.
11. Federal Judicial Appointment
History of Women in Judgeships
FryTell me about your judiciary appointment.
Matthews
About the year 1949 Mr. Truman [Harry] was the president, and there was quite a bit in the newspapers at that time about thirty new judgeships that were to be created. So a lot of women thought that women should now have some recognition in the federal judiciary. At that time no woman had ever served in a federal trial court. The federal trial courts are called United States District Courts all over the country. The whole United States is divided up into eleven judicial circuits comprised of a certain number of states, and the states are divided into districts. For instance, New York has four United States District Courts (Eastern District, Southern District, Northern District, and Western District). The District of Columbia is the only one which has the name of the place. This is the District of Columbia Circuit. The other circuits go by numbers, first, second, third, fourth, fifth, etc.
Fry
I think we're sixth [California].
Matthews
California is the ninth. Ohio is in the sixth.
Anyway, at this particular time, in 1949, there had never been a woman who served as a United States district judge. Now it's true that there were certain judgeships which had been filled by women. For example: In 1928 President Coolidge [Calvin] had appointed Genevieve Cline to the United States Customs Court. The United States Customs Court was a part of the executive department of government. It wasn't considered a part of the judiciary as spoken of in the Constitution. At the present time the United States Customs Court is a part of the federal judiciary. It wasn't at the time Judge Cline served. She was serving in 1949 in that Customs Court judgeship.
Judge Florence Allen had been appointed by President Roosevelt in 1934 to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was the first woman ever to be appointed a judge on the United States Court of Appeals.
Fry
Was this in 1934 or 1944?
1934. There had been several women who held judgeships connected with federal taxes. The first one was Anabelle Matthews of Georgia. She was appointed to what was then called the United States Board of Tax Appeals. It's now called the United States Tax Court.
After Anabelle Matthews served, there was another woman appointed and she was serving in 1949. She was a woman from California, Miss Marion Harron. The United States Tax Court was not a part of the federal judiciary, but a part of the executive department of government; and it still is.
That was the history up to 1949 of United States judgeships insofar as women were concerned.
Fry
Was Marion Harron also a Tax Court judge?
Matthews
Yes, she followed Anabelle Matthews. Other women have followed in both of these courts, the United States Customs Court and the United States Tax Court. But I was trying to tell you who was serving at the time I was appointed. And there was no one other than Judge Cline on the Customs Court, Judge Florence Allen on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and Marion Harron who was then serving on the United States Tax Court. That was it. None of those appointments were part of the federal judiciary except Florence Allen.
9. See also Maurine Howard Abernathy, “Women Judges in United States Courts” , Women Lawyers Journal, 55 (1969), pp. 57-8 . On file at The Bancroft Library.
Support for Appointment of a Woman as District Judge
MatthewsSo I was named then in 1949. Many women's organizations at that time felt that women weren't getting much of an opportunity to participate in anything. For instance, the General Federation of Women's Clubs--which is the largest group of organized women--had a meeting in the West, and they passed a resolution calling on the president, President Truman, to give women more recognition in government. So there were just scores of people who were interested in having a woman receive one of those
Fry
I saw in the collection of Mabel Vernon's correspondence with Anne Martin a couple of letters that were written on your behalf. One gave Anne Martin an account of the "campaign" for your appointment.
10. Mabel Vernon to Anne Martin, February 10, 1950. Appendix.
Matthews
Oh, yes, letters were written to friends, anybody they knew who had anything to do with judicial appointments or the suggesting or recommending of an individual for these posts. A campaign was on to get everyone possible interested. Mrs. Harvey Wiley was interested, you know; and Mrs. Wiley was a client of mine for years. As a matter of fact I probated her husband's will. A lot of people were for my appointment. The National Association of Women Lawyers and the [National Federation of] Business and Professional Women and many of the individual women in the General Federation of Women's Clubs, they were all for it.
Whenever there was a vacancy, the bar association would send a notice to all their members and say, "If you have suggestions, please let us know." So when they sent this notice out, a great many people sent my name in.
Fry
How did that happen?
Matthews
I had been here [in Washington] a long time, you know. I had a lot of friends, both men and women who sent letters. The Bar Association of the District of Columbia, which is primarily men, recommended me. I don't mean that they took my name and sent it in alone. They didn't. What they would do at that time was they would select several names, usually three for each vacancy. They would take these three names and would send the three names in to the attorney general of the United States. So the Bar Association of the District of Columbia endorsed me--I was one of three or four persons.
After I was nominated by President Truman, the Judiciary Committee sent out letters to different legal organizations relative to my qualifications and capabilities. They sent one to the American Bar Association, and the association recommended me. I had been a member of the American Bar Association for quite a while, since 1924. Then a letter was sent to the Federal Bar Association, and they recommended me.
Mrs. India Edwards was at that time head of the Democratic women [Women's Division, Democratic National Committee]. I read an article that stated that a list had been compiled of those who were to be suggested for the appointments, and that my name wasn't on this list. So India Edwards put on her bonnet and went to the White House and told Mr. Truman that it just wouldn't do for this list to be submitted without the name of a single woman on it. So my name became a part of this list, and it was sent up.
Fry
Before your name was on it, India Edwards "put on her bonnet" and went over to the president?
Matthews
That's what the article said. I don't mean that when it went before the bar association it did not have my name on it. I mean President Truman's list of names. The rumor was in the papers that President Truman was going to send up a certain list and who was named on the list. My name was not included. When India Edwards saw that, the story said, she "put her bonnet on" and she went over to see Mr. Truman. When Truman was president, she could got in there any time. She didn't have to make an appointment. She could go there and get in. There a" very few women who have been able to do that in my administration But she could and did. Now the women who followed India later on, a lady from Minnesota, I don't know if she could do it. She's a nice lady, but she just didn't got in to see Mr. Kennedy [John]. I don't know why. At least that's the rumor around Washington.
At any rate, the article said that Mrs. Edwards did go and she told the president what to do as far as the woman question was concerned.
Meeting with President Truman
MatthewsAfter I was nominated, I had an appointment with Mr. Truman. I got the appointment through a military man that I knew who was in the White House. He was serving Mr. Truman. Lo and behold, when I got to the White House, I found that whoever had given me the date had given me the wrong date; and it was the day following. When this mix-up came about, I noticed a red-haired girl coming in, and I recognized her as the girl who used to be my secretary. She was working for Mr. Truman. She threw her arms around me and said, "You come right in." I did. And I had my meeting that day.
Fry
Tell me about your meeting with Harry Truman.
Matthews
He said something to me about India Edwards. He said, "Now I don't know if you would consider this a compliment or not, but India Edwards works like a man." He didn't tell me anything she said about me, but he did say, "If she comes in and asks or suggests that something be done, that a certain appointment be given, well, I try to go along. But if I can't, she doesn't hold it against me, she doesn't have a grudge about it. She goes out and finds something else, and she comes back on. And she suggests another woman for some place. She works like a man."
What President Truman did say to me was, "Now, long after I'm gone from this place, people who were named as federal judges will be serving. The only thing that I ask is that you give the best service that you can. I will just feel wonderful if that's the case." That's all he said.
Fry
Were you a Republican?
Matthews
I just voted for whoever was the best person. In articles it was stated that I was a Democrat, but nobody asked me if I was a Democrat. I didn't say I was. But it was written up at that time that I was. I was surprised really at the tremendous amount of publicity that my appointment received. I guess I ought to have been prepared for it, but I wasn't. The truth of the matter is that I was on the front page of the Washington Post with the headline. I was on the front page of the [Washington] Evening Star. Both of them gave me a big write-up.
Fry
Did you have reporters clamoring at your front door and the whole bit?
Yes, I did. I had a lot of people after me.
The Bench: Duties Over the Years
FryCan you talk about the bench enough to give me an impression of how you feel you fitted in?
Matthews
Yes. I'm speaking now of the time when I went on the bench. It's different now. Since this was federal territory at the time when I went on the bench, the court in which I sat tried practically everything there was to try in Washington. They had some local courts, but those had only a very limited jurisdiction. I don't know whether the limit then was $1,000 or $3,000. But it was a very small limit on the amount that was involved. These local courts could try misdemeanors, but the court that I was in had all the major criminal cases; it had all of the murders, it had all of the rapes, it had all of the house breakings, it had all of the robberies unless the robbery was something like an assault. It had all of the criminal jurisdiction there was to have except misdemeanors.
Then it had all types of civil jurisdiction in addition to the usual jurisdiction that they would have in any federal court. They had all this local work. We even had divorce. All the divorce cases were in the United States District Court. The Federal Judiciary finally worked on Congress to get the divorce jurisdiction sent to a purely local court, not a federal court, and Congress did approve the change. And through the years Congress gave other jurisdiction to the local courts. But we had practically everything.
There was another type of case we had. When people got ready to sue a member of the president's cabinet, and plenty of them were sued, our court was the court in which the case was filed. For instance, if someone wanted to sue an agency like the Interstate Commerce Commission, this would be the court where he would go. If the secretary of state didn't give somebody a passport, and a person thought he ought to have it, our court was where this matter landed. I once had Paul Robeson, the singer, who was seeking a passport. I didn't give him his passport. Courts have become much more liberal about granting passports since that time.
Then we would have all sorts of questions relating to immigration and citizenship, things of that kind. Once I had Dick Haynes, the former singer and movie star. The government was trying to deport him. He was a singer who was married at one time to Rita Hayworth, a Hollywood star. Rita Hayworth was in Hawaii. That was before Hawaii was a state. Dick Haynes went over there to see her. He wasn't married to her then. When he came back, the government tried to exclude him on the grounds that--you know, he was not a citizen--he had filed a claim for exemption from serving in the armed services. I didn't think he had been out of the United States. He went on a United States boat. Hawaii was after all a possession of the United States.
We had all kinds of cases. Many times the secretary of agriculture would issue orders about milk matters, the treatment of milk. We had a lot of National Labor Relations Board cases where they deal with unions and things like that.
I became what is called a senior judge. I became a senior judge in 1968. A senior judge is one who has enough service and enough age to be able to retire.
“Judge Matthews Steps Down” , The Washington Post, Feb. 8, 1968, p. A20 . On file at The Bancroft Library. Also included in Appendix.
“First Woman U.S. District Judge Retires Today” , The Daily Washington Law Reporter, 96:43 (March 1, 1968), p. 377 . Cites important cases on which Judge Matthews gave decisions. These were not cases pertaining to women. On file at The Bancroft Library.
Every year since I became a senior judge I have been asked by the chief judge of my court to continue to serve, and I do--but not to the same extent that I did before. In addition to that I have been invited by other courts to serve. The chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for this circuit has invited me to serve on the United States Court of Appeals.
I was invited to sit in the United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals here in Washington. I agreed to. They had a chief judge, by the way, who was born in Oklahoma, but he was living in Texas at that time. I sat on occasion during two years in that court. To sit on the United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, you have to be designated by Chief Justice Burger [Warren E.]. He used to be on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, right there in the courthouse in which I sit.
Fry
I guess you knew Chief Justice Burger?
Matthews
I do know him. I sat on some cases with him. Some cases in the District Court require a panel of three judges,
12. The panel is comprised of one U.S. Court of Appeals judge and two District Court judges sitting as a District Court. Ed.
Fry
Have you been happy with your docket?
Matthews
You don't pick your cases.
Fry
It's a very complicated procedure. I've never quite understood it.
Matthews
In the U.S. Court of Appeals, they have a system for selecting cases for each panel. They put the names in some kind of a container. Then they draw the names out. You can't pick your judges.
It's interesting work.
Changes in U.S. District Court
FryIn Washington there's such a wide range and variety of cases. Have any changes been made in the kind of cases you handle?
Matthews
Yes. There is a change which has become effective recently. I indicated to you a moment ago that the jurisdiction of the District Court is different now. The president has stated that it would be better for the District of Columbia to operate more like a state. For example, in California, the state courts hear all of the criminal cases that have to do with crimes against the state of California. The federal courts only try those cases in which the crimes are against the federal government. The idea was to make the District of Columbia like the rest of the country. So they have taken now from this United States District Court all the jurisdiction of these criminal offenses under the District of Columbia law and have transferred them to the new local court, the Superior Court. That means that we now have a much smaller number of criminal cases. But oh my, the civil cases they have down in the District Court--there's a tremendous amount of work.
Do you know that one of the great problems of the whole country is the automobile. There are so many traffic accidents. I'm not speaking now of the cases where you determine who is at fault. I'm speaking of the cases where people are suing for damages on the ground that the collision, or whatever it was that caused their injuries, was due to negligence. There have been many, many cases.
Fry
Does that include personal injury? I read somewhere that that's something like eighty-five percent of all the cases.
Matthews
I think it is. In the District Court we are in a kind of state of change now. In August [1973] they will give over to the Superior Court all of the probate work, the wills, the administration of estates, and so on. We've had jurisdiction over those cases too! Of course that's a purely local thing. But the District Court has previously had jurisdiction over these cases.
Fry
That should help.
Matthews
I am kind of sorry to see the probate work leave. They had a wonderful probate office. The administration of the probate office was very, very good.
12. Tenth Congress of International Woman Suffrage Alliance, Paris, 1926
FryOne of the things I was dying to hear about was the International Woman Suffrage Alliance meeting in Paris.
Matthews
Yes, I was there.
Fry
You were there and Anita Pollitzer and Doris Stevens. What can you tell me about that? You were invited and then uninvited, or something.
Matthews
I had a feeling after we got there that we were not too welcome. I felt it was because the League of Women Voters had the ear of a Mrs. Corbett Ashby who was the president of the group. Many of us went as fraternal delegates. I was appointed by the governor of Mississippi as a fraternal delegate from Mississippi. And I presented a certificate of formal appointment.
One thing that was interesting in connection with this International Woman Suffrage Alliance was that they had ladies from all parts of the world who were interested in different things. They made reports on different subjects in which we were interested. But they did have sort of a private hearing on the matter of this organization that was opposing our admission.
Fry
Yes, wasn't that Carrie Chapman Catt's organization [League of Women Voters]?
Matthews
Yes. You know the League of Women Voters were not just for advancement of women. They have taken a position on just about everything under the sun.
Fry
They felt very strongly, didn't they, about protective legislation?
Woman Suffrage Parade, England
MatthewsYes, they thought that what we were doing to try to have protective legislation based upon the nature of the work was doing women a disservice. That's what they thought. We didn't believe this to be so.
One of the pleasant things about that meeting was that, as a result of our being over there, Lady Rhondda [Margaret] of England invited us to come over to England and be in their suffrage parade. Did you hear about that?
Fry
No.
Matthews
She did. She invited us to come over. It was a tremendous parade. They were trying to get suffrage for women at twenty-one. Men could vote at twenty-one, and women had to be thirty. They had an enormous parade. Many of us went over. Anita Pollitzer went. She was there. We marched in the parade. I remember that I carried a banner and the banner said, "Women in the United States vote at twenty-one, why not here?" There was a tremendous wind that day. (This was in 1926.) And the wind almost blew the banner out of our hands, but we managed to hold it. The lady whom I marched with was Mrs. Dexter Otey from Virginia. All along the march we heard people reading: "Women in the United States vote at twenty-one--why not here?" They would say, "Hear, hear!" We got a very good reception. People spoke. The women who were in Parliament spoke, but there weren't many. We went into the Hyde Park section. They had speeches and everything. I don't know how much it helped them get the vote, but that was the general idea.
Fry
Was Mrs. Pankhurst [Emmeline] there?
Matthews
Yes, she was. I don't know what year she died, but she was there and she talked from one of those platforms that were erected in Hyde Park.
I'll tell you who else was there. Who was the man who used to talk on television? Raymond Gram Swing. Betty Gram Swing was there. She was located in London at that time.
Fry
My notes here say that when they refused to let the National Woman's Party be in on the congress in Paris, Lady Rhondda withdrew her application for membership and her Six Point Group in protest of that.
Matthews
I don't remember that.
Fry
I wonder if you remember Mabel Vernon's speech, her very eloquent speech pleading with them to let you in.
Matthews
No, I don't remember her speech. I remember that Mrs. Amelia Himes Walker, of Maryland, who was a very handsome woman, made a very good speech and looked lovely.
Was her speech on behalf of you people?
Matthews
Oh yes, she was one of us.
Fry
I also have another note here that the "ins," the Alliance Labor Committee, got a resolution through on the floor that any differential legislation based on sex may develop into a very real tyranny. That was in a labor committee that sounds as if it were working on the inside or something.
Matthews
I'm sorry. It's been so long that I just don't remember.
There was one lady who went on this trip from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Her name was Mrs. Elizabeth Dixon. She was a woman of considerable means. The most pleasant thing about this trip was that, when we got over there, she said that she had had her honeymoon in Switzerland, Lausanne I think. She was going to drive all the way from Paris to Switzerland. She invited Anita Pollitzer and me and a couple of other women to go with her, and we went. We went all the way through the country. We stopped in the place where Joan of Arc crowned the French king. It was a really nice trip.
Non-acceptance at International Suffrage Meeting Considered Further
FryThe other thing is just a general question about it. How could so many women start out from here without knowing for sure whether they could be part of it? Or was it a political attempt to dramatize the situation?
Matthews
Mrs. Corbett Ashby was an extremely nice person. Before the meeting, she was in the United States. She was entertained by the Woman's Party. She seemed extremely friendly. We felt that there would be no trouble about it at all. Of course, Mrs. Belmont and Miss Paul were always interested in having an international meeting of some kind. They thought it would help women. A group of members of the National Woman's Party decided that they would go.
Fry
And then when the League of Women Voters protested
Matthews
They were there. They had come. There was no showdown until we got there. So we were all mad.
I think Mrs. Belmont was living in Paris at the time. Were you invited out to her chalet or whatever it was?
Matthews
I don't think Mrs. Belmont lived very close in to Paris. I think she lived a ways out. I don't remember Mrs. Belmont at all in connection with that. She might have been there.
Fry
Were you at the conference a few years later, the Inter-American Commission of Women meeting in Havana, Cuba in 1928?
Matthews
No, I was not. I went down to see the women off, but I didn't go. Miss Berrien went.
Fry
Did you go to any other international meeting?
Matthews
I don't think of anything.
13. ERA: Opposition
FryDid you attend the Women's Industrial Conference which was in Washington I think, in the same year as the meeting in Paris, 1926? There was a big controversy there because they omitted the Equal Rights Amendment from the agenda. So the National Woman's Party then scheduled a separate conference two days before the Women's Industrial Conference.
Matthews
I don't remember that.
Fry
It was the Women's Bureau that was sponsoring the Women's Industrial Conference.
Matthews
The Women's Bureau was always antagonistic to the Equal Rights Amendment, to everything from the beginning. Of course, the whole purpose of the Women's Bureau was to deal solely with women. So they could hardly take up anything that contemplated equality.
Fry
I guess Alice Paul tried very hard to get something in, and there was quite a brouhaha according to my notes. There were a number of other people and groups in opposition to what the Woman's Party was trying to do then. I thought you might know something about it.
There was the Florence Kelley group of the National Consumers' League. Are you at all familiar with that?
Matthews
I knew about it. I knew who Florence Kelley was. I know she was a promoter of special legislation for women.
Organized labor didn't seem to want to have labor legislation for men. They wanted men to have theirs by contracts
So what they did in New York was to take the men out of the resolution by the legislature and send it back up limiting it to women. So the thing passed.
Then some woman contested the law in the Supreme Court. Rebekah Greathouse and I were engaged by some of the people to write a brief on behalf of the woman who brought the case.
Brief as Amici Curiae: Morehead v. Tipaldo, 838 (1935) . On file at The Bancroft Library.
Morehead v. Tipaldo (Syllabus), 838 (Argued April 28, 1936-- Decided June 1, 1936 .) On file at The Bancroft Library.
14. “Pay Equality for Women Advanced” , The Evening Star, Washington, D.C., Thursday, June 4, 1936 . On file at The Bancroft Library.
A lot of newspaper people left that day, just the minute the decision was announced. Without checking to see what the reason was or anything, they rushed down and put it on the wires. So the way it was written up in the newspapers was that the Court had done something terrible to the women.
The Supreme Court had been holding some of President Roosevelt's New Deal legislation invalid. He didn't like that at all, so he was getting ready to pack the Court, so to speak. The decision that we got was only a five to four decision. So the question came up again within about a year's time, or a little bit more, not the same case, but another case. You know, the Supreme Court turned right around and changed the decision and upheld the state minimum wage law for women only.
Fry
I wanted to ask you about any other opposition or competing things that were going on. There seemed to be quite a bit of activity on the part of other women's organizations for
Matthews
Sheppard-Towner sounds very familiar, but I can't recall now what it was.
Fry
One was to provide more help for adequate maternal care in childbirth because the United States at that time had a very poor statistical record.
Matthews
I don't remember too much about that. It rings a bell but at the same time it doesn't tell me anything in particular.
Fry
Did you know Josephine Casey in the National Woman's Party?
Matthews
Yes.
Fry
What was her role in it, do you know?
Matthews
I think she was an organizer for labor at one time, stood very high with them. But they didn't like this business of her being for the Equal Rights Amendment. They didn't like that at all. They were ready to go against her on that.
Fry
I thought that someone who had been a labor organizer could serve as a bridge between the groups that were very sensitive about women's protective legislation and
Matthews
You know, it's a very strange thing. Take this Esther Peterson--you know who she is, don't you? She had about the [highest] ranking job in the days of John Kennedy, when he was president. Right now she is acting as a sort of consumer advocate for a large grocery chain. At any rate, she always worked for labor. Then she was put on that White House Status of Women Committee. A lot of women were put on that committee. Among them Marguerite Rawalt. Imagine my surprise when a report came out--of course Esther Peterson was more or less responsible for it--and the contents of the report were not favorable to the amendment at all. It was indicated in the report that this just wasn't the time for the amendment, or words to that effect. I was surprised that Marguerite Rawalt didn't come forward and say, "This is the time for it." Apparently she thought that
Certainly Esther Peterson used her place against the amendment at all times. And yet ... [Laughter] Not long ago, about a year ago [1972] there was a celebration down there to celebrate the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment by Congress. They invited both men and women ... but a lot of the people that participated in that celebration were really latecomers to the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment.
Fry
Was this the Rawalt group?
Matthews
She organized the celebration, and she acted as the master of ceremonies, so to speak. The reason I'm telling you this tale is that there was Esther Peterson!
Fry
Really?
Matthews
Yes, she was there. She had spent all those years opposing it and now she...
Fry
I understand Alice Paul wasn't invited.
Matthews
I don't know whether she was or not, but I was going to tell you that I wasn't going to go, because the people who were organizing it were mostly late-comers to the Equal Rights Amendment. I was perfectly willing for these men who had helped to have all the honor that they were entitled to.
Fry
What men were they, you mean in Congress?
Matthews
Yes. Senator Cook [Marlow W.] of Kentucky. And Birch Bayh. He and his wife were there. They had somebody who walked out as though she was the representative of the Woman's Party. But if they didn't invite Miss Paul-- You know, Miss Paul is the kind of a person who likes to be in the midst of everything that is going to push this amendment; but when it comes to ceremonial functions, Miss Paul is usually the person who sends someone else to do the ceremonial part of it. She's like that. Of course there's something to that. There's only one Miss Paul, you know.
Fry
I was also told that Don Edwards, the congressman who handled it in the subcommittee in the House and worked so hard for it, didn't get invited.
Marguerite Rawalt called me on the telephone and asked me to come, urged me to come. I don't know. I finally decided it would be easier to go than not to go. But I'm happy for all of them to join whether early or late.
Fry
Yes, if they'll work for its ratification, let them have their due.
Matthews
I think Marguerite is working hard for that.
Fry
In the case of Josephine Casey, are you saying that she is parallel to Esther Peterson?
Matthews
Oh no, I didn't say that at all. I don't know of anything that Peterson has done for the Equal Rights Amendment other than go to that dinner, but she is a late supporter. All I know is that she has worked against it. What I'm saying about Casey is that Casey at least had the courage of her convictions. Notwithstanding the fact that labor was opposed, she would say, "This is right, this Equal Rights Amendment is right. Women should have equal opportunities with men." She always stood her ground.
14. National Woman's Party: Possible Alternative to Major Parties
FryThere's something else that I wondered about. In the early days of the equal rights push and even before that, when the National Woman's Party was trying to decide exactly how it should define its new goal after suffrage was won, I think somewhere Mrs. Belmont stood up and made a speech that the Woman's Party was going to be a good alternative for women to the other two major parties. I wondered if that was ever really considered. Did the Woman's Party ever have any special partisan relationship or consider a partisan role now that suffrage was won?
Matthews
I don't know whether Mrs. Belmont advocated a partisan role or not. She did come sometimes to meetings and she would speak briefly. Mrs. Belmont was a woman who had a lot of ideas. She had an idea once for a Parliament of Women, as she called it. She had some sketches made for a building that might be on the other side of that Old Capitol. It was very attractive. She did work with Miss Paul seeing some of those ladies abroad, in France, who had something to do with the movement there. Of course, you know the Woman's Party, Miss Paul was all for the
Fry
In William O'Neill's book, Everyone was Brave: A History of Feminism in America [ Chicago, Quadrangle Books, 1971 ], he writes that the women really didn't take an active part in political parties at that time. There was no real policy for them to do this in the Woman's Party. Do you think that was the case?
Matthews
I know at one time the Woman's Party thought it would be a good idea to try to elect some women to public office. They did a little bit towards that, but it was sort of a hopeless thing. It was after 1920.
15. Mabel Vernon, in a Regional Oral History Office interview with Amelia Fry tells of the 1924 campaign of Mrs. Elizabeth Culbertson of Meadville, Pennsylvania, for Congress. Ed.
Fry
Why would they have to be a Democrat?
Matthews
What I am saying is that in the times of which we are speaking, when the Woman's Party was trying to get these women to run, at that time in Pennsylvania nearly everybody was a Republican. There were very few Democrats. Of course, when you have nearly everybody a Republican, there is usually a strong Republican group in control. They are going to pick whomever they want to run, and they are usually not going to have any consideration about running a woman unless they think the woman has some advantage in the running. Thus it was out of the question for a woman to get the nomination in a place like Pennsylvania at that time. At any rate, these women who ran were nice enough women; but they were women who either were Democrats, or they were women who had some political affiliation that wasn't the least bit helpful. So none of these women got elected, none of them.
I just don't know why it is but so many women are not interested in working for their advancement; and it may well be
Fry
When you say, "Women aren't interested in working for their advancement," you mean--
Matthews
I don't really mean that. What I'm trying to say is that there are so many things that come to women to do every day, like taking care of their family, sending their children off to school, and all that. These daily activities are just more pressing than political advancement. I think that a great number of men are not very sympathetic. Some are, though. I don't know what the answer is. I wish you would tell me!
15. Rise and Fall of Feminism
FryNo, I'm just as puzzled as you are. I did notice that a number of writers keep saying that there was a big slackening in the interest in feminism per se in the twenties and then of course during the Depression in the thirties. I wonder if you felt this after your first interesting activities of picketing the White House, then winning suffrage; and then what happened?
Matthews
Of course suffrage was just one thing, and it's much easier to concentrate women on working for one thing like suffrage. Suffrage seemed to be the answer to everything. If they had the vote, they could have this. If they had the vote, they could have that. I think it was easier to get women together on the suffrage movement than to get them together on the different bills.
Fry
I wonder why the Equal Rights Amendment never did become the great symbol for women's freedom which the suffrage issue did.
Matthews
I think maybe due to the fact that the suffrage issue was just one right. The Equal Rights Amendment covers a multitude of rights. I don't know what the explanation of that is.
You know, one thing that I can't understand is how so many women flock to business and professional women's clubs yet have never worked or become associated with an organization that just stands for the Equal Rights Amendment. Today, however,
One such woman [Earlene White] was elected right about that time [1937] in Atlantic City, and she was from my state [Mississippi]. I don't think she did much, if anything, to promote the amendment during her term.
The programs of the business and professional women's clubs have been varied. Another thing too is that they had many different local groups. They had the state groups. They are interested in the offices and getting work done and in areas in which they're participating and supporting. It has a large spread, and so not too much time is spent on the amendment.
Fry
Because of this great diffusion of activities.
16. National Woman's Party: Membership Revolt, 1946
FryThere is a reference to an open membership revolt in the mid-1940s in the Woman's Party.
Matthews
I don't remember.
Fry
I keep picking up little things about this. In 1946. Here is a telegram from Mabel Vernon in which you were mentioned as being on a committee to help adjudicate some dispute.
Matthews
[reading]
"Several Washington members of the Woman's Party, who have had no part in recent meetings and activities designedFrom unidentified telegram from Mabel Vernon.
― 59 ―to prevent public dissension which might injure the amendment, now propose a Solutions Committee to recommend action looking to the resolving of present difficulties, the committee to be composed of three members acceptable to those who requested the October 27 meeting and to the national chairman and first vice-chairman."
At one time there was some sort of difficulty between Doris Stevens and Miss Paul, I think. I do remember something about this. I remember having a meeting with Mrs. Emma Guffey Miller. It seems to me it was something about the organization, that the claim was that something hadn't been regularly done. That group was headed by Doris Stevens. I suppose they did have some kind of litigation at one time, I think, concerning an election.
I might say that I never felt that there ought to have been this litigation. I wasn't at all in sympathy with their effort.
Fry
Was this relating to an election of officers?
Matthews
I can't remember now exactly how it came about, but at any rate there was some question about whether the election had been handled right. Miss Stevens, and Miss Berrien were in on it. I felt very bad about it. I didn't get into the litigation at all. The reason I stayed out was that I didn't feel that I could get in on it. Mrs. Harvey Wiley was somebody who was pulled in by Miss Berrien and Miss Stevens, and I didn't think she ought to be in on it at all. She had told me she would not get involved. But they would take papers to her and say, "Does this suit you?" If she said, "No, it doesn't suit me," they would say, "Well, we'll fix it so it will." At any rate, there was a law suit filed by the group that was headed by Doris, and they lost their case.
Fry
Maybe Alice Paul will tell me about this as one chapter in the history of the party.
Matthews
Maybe she could tell you. I stayed out of it, because I had represented the Woman's Party. Some of the people against the Woman's Party, I knew well; for instance, Mrs. Wiley was a client of mine. And I couldn't see myself getting in the middle of that, but my sympathies were with Miss Paul's side of it. I tried to pull Mrs. Wiley off and also Miss Berrien, but I wasn't successful. Doris Stevens and Miss Berrien are
Fry
I have a funny little note from Mabel Vernon written to Ann Martin in 1947. There's no date on it other than that.
"I try to stay clear of the Woman's Party. One case came up last week; one of the lawyers for the 'constitutionalists' was ill, and the case was postponed."Letter from Mabel Vernon to Ann Martin [1947]. And she says, "constitutionalist" is the title given to her, Mabel Vernon, by Mrs. Wiley.
Matthews
You see, they were saying that the Woman's Party didn't operate according to the rules.
Fry
Who were saying that?
Matthews
It wasn't Mrs. Wiley really, it was Miss Stevens primarily. She was the ringleader of that whole thing.
Fry
I guess what I'm more interested in is whether there were any big changes in the Woman's Party.
Matthews
It hurt the Woman's Party. Miss Berrien had often said to me, "Miss Paul is the Woman's Party." Well, I would never have said anything like that, but she just adored Miss Paul. She would write her letters in the most loving terms. I don't know why Miss Stevens was able to pull Miss Berrien away from Miss Paul.
16. For additional details see Conversations with Alice Paul: an Autobiography, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1975.
Alice Paul Compared with Subsequent Leadership
FryAll organizations have things like that happen. It's sort of amazing that there wasn't more of this, since Alice Paul ran the organization with such an iron hand. I wonder if her own dedication managed to hold people together.
I think that it did. The Woman's Party has always been a small group. Mrs. Ethel Earnest Murrell from Florida was chairman at one time, and when she got in we thought she would be just fine. But far from working on Woman's Party concerns, she went down in Florida, and she got everybody into the party by promising to promote everything under the sun.
Fry
Other issues?
Matthews
Yes. That didn't help the Equal Rights Amendment at all.
Fry
I bet Alice Paul straightened her out pretty fast.
Matthews
Or tried to. Miss Paul was never able really to go and "do her thing" in the sense of going and just doing what she wanted to do. She has tried many times as you know, but somehow ERA always drags her back. Of course this is Miss Paul's one love. This is the one thing she wants to do.
Fry
It has been a very monolithic existence for her. She's quite a woman. I hope we can get an adequate portrait of her out of all of this.
Matthews
Doris was on very good terms with Miss Paul and just thought she was a wonderful person. She wrote the book, Jailed for Freedom [1920].
Fry
She was very active all through the twenties I believe. She remained in the party.
Matthews
Yes, she did.
Fry
I think we have used all your time. It was most fortunate for us that you were able to record today.
Biography of Amelia R. Fry
Graduated from the University of Oklahoma, B.A. in psychology and English, M.A. in educational psychology and English, University of Illinois; additional work, University of Chicago, California State University at Hayward.
Instructor, freshman English at University of Illinois and at Hiram College. Reporter, suburban daily newspaper, 1966-67.
Interviewer, Regional Oral History Office, 1959-- conducted interview series on University history, woman suffrage, the history of conservation and forestry, public administration and politics. Director, Earl Warren Era Oral History Project, documenting governmental/political history of California 1925-1953; director, Goodwin Knight-Edmund G. Brown Era Project.
Author of articles in professional and popular journals; instructor, summer Oral History Institute, University of Vermont, 1975, 1976, and oral history workshops for Oral History Association and historical agencies; consultant to other oral history projects; oral history editor, Journal of Library History, 1969-1974; secretary, the Oral History Association, 1970-1973.
Index
[The numbers below represent page numbers in the volume. Clicking on the hyperlink will take you to the top of that page.]
- Allen, Judge Florence: 38
- Ashby, Mrs. Corbett: 47, 49
- Association of American Law Schools: 15
- automobile, effect on litigation: 46
- Bacon, Sylvia: iii
- Battelle, Mrs.: 23-24
- Bayhm Senator Birch: 54
- Belmont, Alva: 20-22, 35, 49-50, 55
- Berrien, Laura M.: 36, 50, 59-60
- Broun, Heywood: 27
- Burger, Chief Justice Warren E.: 45
- Burnett, Mary Margaret: iii
- Casey, Josephine: 53, 55
- Catt, Carrie Chapman: 47
- Cline, Judge Genevieve: 38
- Connelly, Mary M.: 4
- Cook, Senator Marlow W.: 54
- Coolidge, President Calvin: 38
- courts, jurisdiction and organization of: 43-46, 52
- Craighill, Polly Wirtzman: iii
- Culbertson, Elizabeth: 56
- Deeds, Margaret A. (Peggy): iii
- discrimination against women:
- Dixon, Elizabeth: 49
- Dupont, Miss _____, (architect): 20
- Edwards, Congressman Don: 54
- Edwards, India: 41-42
- ERA, Equal Rights Amendment: 10, 29, 54-55, 61
- Equal Rights: 18, 26, 28
- Fourteenth Amendment: See discrimination against women.
- Frohman, Patricia: iii
- Garner, John Nance: 28
- Gay, Bonnie Lewis: iii
- General Federation of Women's Clubs: 39-40
- George Washington University: 3
- Gilbert, Judge Ralph Waldo Emerson: 9
- Gillett, Emma: 14-16
- Greathouse, Rebekah: 15, 36, 52
- Greenhow, Rose O'Neil: 18-19
- Hale, Ruth (first wife of Heywood Broun): 27
- Harding, President Warren G.: 23
- Harlan, Roma: v
- Harron, Judge Marion: 39
- Havemeyer, Mrs. H.O.: 5
- Haynes, Dick: 44
- Hayworth, Rita: 44
- Howard University: See women, legal training and practice.
- International Woman Suffrage Alliance Conference, Paris, 1926: 47-50
- Kelley, Florence: 51
- Kenyon, Judge Dorothy: 26
- law concerning women: See discrimination against women; ERA.
- League of Women Voters: 47, 49
- Lockwood, Belva: 13-14
- Martin, Ann: 40
- Matthews, Judge Anabelle: 39
- Matthews, Burnita Shelton:
- Miller, Emma Guffey: 59
- Murrell, Ethel Earnest: 61
- Mussey, Ellen Spencer: 14-16
- National Association of Women Lawyers: 18, 26, 40, 52
- National Federation of Business and Professional Women: 25-26, 40, 58
- National Recovery Administration (NRA): See discrimination against women
- National Woman's Party: 4-8, 10, 16, 23
- O'Neill, William: 56
- Otey, Mrs. Dexter: 48
- Pankhurst, Emmeline: 48
- Park, Ellen Lee: iii-vi
- Paul, Alice: 5-7, 10, 16-17, 21, 33-34, 49, 51, 54-56, 59-61
- Pollitzer, Anita: 25-26, 47-49
- Peterson, Esther: 53-54
- Rawalt, Marguerite: 53-55
- Rhondda, Lady Margaret: 48
- Robeson, Paul: 43
- Roosevelt, Eleanor: 10, 25
- Seaton, Mary Giove: iv
- Sirica, Chief Judge John J.: v-vi
- Smith, Mrs. Clarence: 26
- Smith, Jane Norman: 10, 25
- Stevens, Doris: 47, 59-60
- Swing, Betty Gram: 48
- Swing, Raymond Gram: 48
- Truman, President Harry S.: 38-39, 41-42
- Vernon, Mabel: 40, 48, 57-58, 60
- Walker, Amelia Himes: 48
- White House Status of Women Committee: 53
- White, Sue: 34
- Wiley, Anna Kelton: 5-6, 40, 59-60
- Wilkenson, Mrs. J.D.: 8
- women:
- Women's Bureau: 51
- Women's Rights: See discrimination against women; ERA; women.
- Yaffe, Barbara Susman: iii
Courtesy of Regional Oral History Office, University of California, Berkeley
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt0r29n44z&brand=oac4
Title: Burnita Shelton Matthews
By: Amelia R. Fry
Date: 1973
Contributing Institution: Regional Oral History Office, University of California, Berkeley
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