Women In Public Service (audio)

Susie Marshall Sharp (July 7, 1907 – March 1, 1996) was a pioneer in the legal profession, and a distinguished jurist who became the first woman in the United States to be elected chief justice of a state supreme court. In 1926, she entered law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as the only woman in her class. In 1929, Sharp went into private practice with her father, James, in the firm of Sharp & Sharp. For the first 17 years of her law practice, women in North Carolina were not even allowed to serve on juries. She became the state's first woman city attorney. In 1949, Governor Scott appointed Sharp a state Superior Court judge, making her the first female judge in the history of the state. In 1962, Governor Sanford made Sharp the first female Associate Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. In 1974, voters gave her 74 percent of the vote to elect her Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, the only woman in American history ever to be elected by the people of her stat