Tulsa’s Women In the Law By the Honorable Martha Rupp Carter
This article is dedicated to D. Faith Orlowski, a Tulsa woman’s woman lawyer, a woman of firsts in generosity, kindness, professionalism, competence and humor like no other. We will miss her inspiring spirit, her contagious laugh, and her love of life and the law. Keeping the faith, as Faith showed us how, would honor her. As we grieve, we know D. Faith Orlowski we “are much richer for the life which she lived.” History is often the result of who remembers events and persons and acts to memorialize those memories. Although sometimes elusive and imperfect, history can inspire, instruct, and light the way forward for those who follow. The history of Tulsa's women lawyers is made of just such stuff. It may be imperfect or incomplete, but nonetheless inspires and teaches. It is powerful and humbling to learn of our pioneer sisters, their grit and audacity as they paved our way and allowed us to see what is possible as women lawyers, judges, mentors, benefactors, and persons of quality and worth. United States Constitution, Amendment XIX. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by any State on account of sex. Ratified August 18, 1920.
10 Tulsa Lawyer
We laud fierce, dedicated women from everywhere in this special year of 2020 marking 100 years of the 19th Amendment. Endowing women with the right to vote afforded women the fullest recognition of citizenship. Securing women’s right to vote was a brutal affair spanning seventy-two years and three generations of
combat. An Oklahoma suffragist actually died fighting for the Sate’s ratification of the 19th Amendment. Miss Aloysius Larch-Miller was seriously ill with the Spanish influenza in February 1920 and had been instructed by her doctor to remain in bed. She instead summoned her strength to make an impassioned plea in a county convention debate for a special legislative session to address Oklahoma’s ratification. She defeated her debate opponent with her eloquence and logic. After stirring her audience to action, she went home and died two days later. The Oklahoma legislature made ratification of the 19th Amendment on February 27, 1920, her memorial. Reflection on Tulsa's rich heritage of women in the law is a fine way to celebrate the enfranchisement of women. When Grace Elmore Gibson was admitted to the bar in 1929, and began trying cases before juries, women had not yet been granted the right to serve on them. Ms. Gibson’s view of women serving on juries was different from the prevailing view of the time, that women’s emotions would make their decisions for them. Her view was instead that women would add a new dimension to decision-making in jury trials. The regard of Ms. Gibson’s male colleagues might have been indicated by the Tulsa County Bar Association’s selection of her to serve for several weeks in a district judgeship for a vacationing judge. She was tapped in 1936 by Governor E. W. Marland to sit on the Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals in the embezzlement case against a county judge. This honor led to the first opinion ever written by a female member in that appellate court, an opinion in which the two other judges concurred. Ms. Gibson was active in political and community affairs, ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives, served in World War II as director of the Women’s Contact Corps of the Office of Civilian Defense to marshal women volunteers to assist in the civil defense area in Oklahoma. She was appointed in 1944 by Tulsa’s Mayor to serve in the post of city treasurer, the highest non-elective city post to be held by a woman up to that time.
