Alice Boarman Baldridge

Alice Boarman Baldridge. A pioneer in the campaign for women's rights and equal opportunity, Alice Boarman Baldridge was born in New Orleans in 1874. While enrolled at Sophie Newcomb College she met Felix E. Baldridge, a medical student at nearby Tulane. The couple married in 1895. They purchased a home on this property in 1906. It was demolished in the 1960s., Active in the women's suffrage movement, Baldridge served as officer in the Huntsville Equal Suffrage Association from 1912 until 1920. In 1916, before ratification of the 19th Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote, she won a seat on the Madison County School board, the first woman to win elected office in Madison County. Recalling her successful candidacy, she stated: "The idea of a woman holding elected office was so new that I feared the prejudice against it would be insurmountable, but I felt I should serve a good purpose if I only made it easier for the next woman.", After the death of her husband in 1917, Baldridge immersed herself in the study of law, a profession largely closed to women in the early twentieth century. After successfully completing a degree from the Chicago Correspondence School of Law, she passed the Alabama Bar in 1918, becoming the first woman to practice law in Madison County. In the 1920s, she left Huntsville and continued her legal career in New York City. Retiring in 1957, Alice Boarman Baldridge returned to Huntsville.