This story was originally published in the 2022 Special Anniversary Edition of Capstone Lawyer as a part of the commemoration of The 50 | 150 Anniversaries—celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the founding of the School of Law and acknowledging it was just 50 years ago (in May of 2022) that the first class of African American students graduated from the Law School.
In 1907, Luelle Lamar Allen became the first female graduate of the University of Alabama School of Law. In the years since, the percentage of female students at Alabama Law has steadily increased. In fact, three of the past four incoming 1L classes have each consisted of more women than men –a milestone that would not have been possible without the leadership of female trailblazers who came before.
After a change in wording in the State Bar admissions statute in 1908, Maud McLure Kelly became the first woman to have an active and enduring legal practice in the State of Alabama. She was also the second woman to graduate from Alabama Law (Class of 1908)— following Luelle Lamar Allen (Class of 1907).*
Nina Miglionico (Class of 1936) ran for Birmingham City Council in 1963. “She campaigned against organized opposition from the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens’ Council, who faulted her support for integration and reconciliation and vilified her Catholicism and Italian ethnicity. [Despite the opposition] she won the seat and became the first woman elected to Birmingham’s city government.”**
Judge Irene Feagin Scott (Class of 1936) was appointed to the United States Tax Court in May of 1960 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. She served in that capacity for 12 years and then was reappointed by President Richard Nixon for an additional 15 years. In 1978, she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws by the University of Alabama School of Law. ***
In 1974, Justice Janie Ledlow Shores (Class of 1959) became the first woman ever elected to the Alabama Supreme Court. She served in this position for 25 years. While at Alabama Law, she was one of just four women in her cohort. Her notes and outlines at the School of Law were legendary; for years after she graduated, countless students insisted that they succeeded in law school only because they relied on Janie Shores’s notes. ****
Camille Wright Cook (Class of 1948) entered law school during World War II when there were but 12 other students. Nearly 20 years after taking her degree, she returned to the School of Law as an administrative assistant to the dean, was promoted to assistant dean and assistant professor, and promoted again to full Professor of Law. Cook is recognized as both the first female faculty member and the first female tenured faculty member at Alabama Law. And in 1992, she be- came the first female professor at The University of Alabama to hold a named, endowed chair. *****
Sue Thompson (Class of 1974) was one of the first female African American graduates at Alabama Law, earning her degree in 1974. Thompson, Booker T. Forte, Jr. (Class of 1972), and retired Circuit Judge John H. England, Jr. (Class of 1974) were founding members of the first Black law firm in Tuscaloosa. Most of Thompson’s 40-plus-year legal career has been spent advocating on behalf of low income and marginalized groups. A frequent collaborator with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund addressing school desegregation issues in Alabama, she is a local public education advocate.
*Paul McWhorter Pruitt, Jr., Maud McLure Kelly, Encyclopedia of Alabama (2007).
** FROM THE ALABAMA LAWYER: Women Lawyers in the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame (2022).
*** Caroline Greer, Janie Ledlow Shores, Encyclopedia of Alabama (2020). AND Alabama Law Remembers Justice Janie L. Shores, The University of Alabama School of Law (2017).
**** Tom Scott and Irene Feagin Scott Collection, University of Alabama School of Law Bounds Law Library Archives.
***** Mark E. Brandon, Alabama Law Remembers Professor Emerita Camille Wright Cook , The University of Alabama School of Law (2018).