Ida Leggett
Ida Leggett is Idaho’s first African American female lawyer and judge.[1]
Leggett was born in a small Alabama town where her father worked at a sawmill and her mother as an educator. The Jim Crow laws were still prevalent during Leggett’s youth, and she attended the Tuskegee University after graduating from her segregated high school. She dropped out a year later and decided to marry and raise a family. By the time she continued her higher education, Leggett was a single mother to three children. She graduated from the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida and earned her J.D. degree at Gonzaga University School of Law in Spokane, Washington. It was during her time in Washington that Leggett worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office and clerked for a Washington Supreme Court Justice.[2][3]
In 1986, Leggett became the first African American female admitted to practice law in Idaho. Despite encountering racial discrimination, she set up a law practice in Coeur d’Alene.[1] In 1992, she became the first African American female to become a judge upon her appointment to the Second District Court in Lewiston, Idaho. Prior to her judgeship, Leggett served as a member of the Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole. She resigned from the bench in 1998 in order to relocate closer to her children in Seattle and lead a more serene life.[4][5][6][7]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ a b Kenan, Randall (1999). Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century. Random House. ISBN 9780679737889.
- ^ "Equal Justice Newsletter: Volume 3, Number 1, March 2000". www.courts.wa.gov. Retrieved 2019-08-28.
- ^ "Interview With The Honorable Ida Leggett". for the colored girls who have considered suicide. 2016-03-08. Retrieved 2019-08-28.
- ^ Tribune, KATHY HEDBERG of the. "Standing in judgment". The Lewiston Tribune. Retrieved 2019-08-28.
- ^ Hovis, George (2007). Vale of Humility: Plain Folk in Contemporary North Carolina Fiction. Univ of South Carolina Press. ISBN 9781570036965.
- ^ Abrams, Joan. "IDAHO'S JUDICIARY CD'A WOMAN IS NEW JUDGE IDA LEGGETT PRAISED FOR INTELLECT, EXPERIENCE AS SINGLE, WORKING MOTHER". The Lewiston Tribune. Retrieved 2019-08-28.
- ^ Branting, Steven D. (2013-02-05). Historic Firsts of Lewiston, Idaho: Unintended Greatness. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 9781614238515.