Clara Shortridge Foltz

Clara Shortridge Foltz, 1900

Clara Shortridge Foltz was loud and opinionated. Some felt she acted too much like a man to be respectable as a lady. And yet, people also clamored that she was too much like a woman to be taken seriously. For Clara, well, the comments did sting. "I had no thought of the hardships to be encountered, the humiliation, and the thousand torments to be suffered!" she would say in reflecting back. But she continued to pursue what mattered. She cared about justice. About the law. About opening the many doors still locked tight to women like her. And this, she most certainly did.

Amongst her many accomplishments, Clara became the first female lawyer on the Pacific Coast, the first woman admitted to the California Bar, the first female deputy district attorney in the U.S., the first to formally propose the notion of a public defender, and the first woman to run for Governor of California.

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"I am descended from the heroic stock of Daniel Boone and never shrank from contest nor knew a fear. I inherit no drop of craven blood." - Clara Shortridge Foltz

Born in Indiana in 1849, Clara married at fifteen. By twenty-seven, she was a mother of five. That was the year her husband left the family. Two years later, Clara officially got a divorce and was granted full custody of the children. She spoke of herself as a widow from then on, even though her ex-husband was alive.

With her husband gone, Clara needed to find work to support her family. She had long been drawn to the law and was already advocating for reforms in her community. But resistance came quickly when she sought an apprenticeship with a local lawyer. One family friend responded with disapproval:

My dear young friend,

Excuse my delay in answering your letter asking permission to enter my law office as a student. My high regard for your parents, and for you, who seem to have no right understanding of what you say you want to undertake, forbid encouraging you in so foolish a pursuit,---wherein you would invite nothing but ridicule if not contempt.

A woman's place is at home, unless it is as a teacher. If you would like a position in our public schools I will be glad to recommend you, for I think you are well-qualified.

Undeterred, Clara kept looking. But even when she found an attorney willing to let her apprentice, another obstacle stood in her way: California law at the time barred women from taking the bar exam.