Alma H. Law

Alma H. Law. , Running on the ballot as "A. Law" to disguise her gender, Alma Law won election in 1929 as a magistrate and member of the Shelby County Quarterly Courts by a vote of 990 to 45. The first woman to be elected the county's history, she was later elected by her magistrate peers as vice-chairman of the Quarterly Court with responsibility for presiding over its meetings. , Before running for office Law was a teacher at Lauderdale School. On the death of elderly magistrate in her South Memphis working class district, several ward heelers loyal to Mayor E.H. Crump's political machine sought his support to fill the vacancy. Crump turned them all down, however, and endorsed Alma Law, his oldest friend and childhood playmate from Hudsonville, Mississippi. Later, he was the only person known to address Mr. Crump as "Edward.", County where bribes, kickbacks, and payoffs were the norm. Squire Law, however, refused to allow her court profit center. In the 1930s Irving Strauch, a young lawyer who later became a distinguished Circuit Court Judge, said, "She ran the only honest JP Court in the county." When Squire Law discovered that one of her constables was taking bribes, she insisted that he be fired, but Crump, ever the machine politician, quietly transferred the constable to another district., On the Quarterly Court Law was a strong voice for public education, both for white and black students. During a newspaper interview in 1972, T. Blair Hunt, Jr., principal of Booker T. Washington High School, noted that she was his go-to contact if he needed a special favor from "Boss" Crump. " I knew I couldn't ask her very often," Hunt said, "but if I did, she always came through.", Squire Alma H. Law was re-elected to office in succeeding terms and served until her death in 1947.