Lucy Somerville Howorth

Lucy Somerville Howorth (July 1, 1895 – August 24, 1997) was an American lawyer, feminist and politician. On August 18, 1917, in the State Capitol gallery in Nashville, Tennessee, she witnessed the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution being ratified, giving women the right to vote. This inspired her lifelong fight for the civil rights of minorities and women. She is also known for her New Deal legislative efforts.

Somerville was born on July 1, 1895 in Greenville, Mississippi. As the daughter of Nellie Nugent Somerville, nationally known as a temperance and woman suffrage leader and the first woman to serve in the Mississippi Legislature, she was raised in an atmosphere of female equality, a rarity for 19th century Mississippi. Somerville attended Randolph-Macon Women’s College, now Randolph College, in Lynchburg, Virginia, (1912-1916) where she was a member of Alpha Omicron Pi Fraternity, Phi Gamma Mu International Honor Society and the Phi Beta Kappa Society. After completing her A.B. she continued her education at Columbia University as a graduate student in psychology and economics. While living in New York City, she would attend political rallies and meetings; she also regularly visited settlement houses and sweatshops where she first saw how bosses mistreated working women and minorities. These experiences sparked her lifelong interest in civil rights.

From 1920 to 1922 she returned to the South and enrolled in the Law School of University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi, and graduated summa cum laude with a LL.B., being one of only two women in her class. While a law student at the University of Mississippi, she started a female basketball team, a writers group and a book review column.

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