Lady Willie Forbus papers, circa 1922-1983

Lady Willie Forbus (1892-1993) was one of the first women to practice law in Seattle and the first to represent the 44th District in the state senate. She was a liberal Democrat, nicknamed the Steel Magnolia for her relentless advocacy of children's rights and equal opportunities for women.

She was born into a large, poor family in Mississippi and began running the family's household at 14. After graduating from high school, her three brothers received college scholarships, but colleges were not offering aid to women at the time, so Lady worked her way through the University of Mississippi as a stenographer for a local judge. She graduated in 1915 and applied to law schools at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Cornell, but these universities were not accepting women into law school. She attended the University of Michigan law school and graduated in 1918, the only women in a class of 50. When she graduated, the dean of the law school said, "Goodbye, Lady Willie, someday you'll make a good stenographer for some lawyers," a comment that stayed with her the rest of her life.

She wrote to lawyers in Denver, Cheyenne, San Francisco, and Seattle looking for work, and received an encouraging response from Walter Fulton, a Seattle criminal lawyer, so she moved West, arriving in Seattle in 1918. She worked as a law clerk for one year, and opened her own practice in 1919. She married Alvaro Shoemaker in 1921, kept her own last name, and gave their two daughters hyphenated last names, which were both very unusual at the time. They divorced in 1936, but remained close until Shoemaker's death in 1948.

In 1922, Forbus successfully proved that a death deemed suicide was actually murder, ensuring the victim's widow received benefits, and ran for prosecuting attorney. She lost, but this marked her entry into politics. She also began to get more active in civil activities, testifying on behalf of children's, women's and teacher's rights. She ran twice for King County Superior Court, in 1932 and 1934. Her platform was based on her belief "in humanity, in the law, and in the administration of justice." Despite her strong campaigns, she lost both elections, and was told by other judges that she lost because she was a woman.

By the end of the 1930s, she was a well-known public figure for her work with civil rights, and the King County Democratic Central Committee asked her to run for state senate. She was elected in 1942, representing the 44th district. At this point, she was a single mother whose daughters worked with her in Olympia, one as a page and one as a secretary. She continued her fight for the underprivileged by sponsoring bills relating to family issues, civil actions, health care, and housing. She was appointed chair of the Judiciary Committee and member of the Appropriations Committee. While serving in the senate, Forbus was also an assistant attorney general for the state Department of Labor and Industries (1943) and the state Fisheries Department (1944-1946).

Through the mid-1980s, Forbus continued her work as a lawyer and advocate for equal rights, was a board member of the Washington branch of American Lawyers Against First Strike Nuclear Arms and, from 1958 to 1969, the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington. She gave speeches ranging in subject matter from "Educational Development in Colonial America" to "Garden Planning" to "An International Bill of Rights." A staunch promoter of equal rights well before the advent of feminism, Forbus lived the life she advocated for, overcoming discrimination to make her own way through college and law school to become the first woman in Seattle to own her law practice. She retired from practicing law in 1984, at age 92, but continued to speak out in support of equal right for women and against discrimination towards minorities. She died in Seattle at the age of 100.