THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Jean Ledwith King

March 16, 1924 – October 9, 2021

“If a whole lot of people are mad at you, you must be doing something right.”

Veteran Feminists of America Salute to Feminist Lawyers, Harvard Club, NYC, June 9, 2008

JLK: My track to becoming a lawyer started in 1964, when I went to the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. There was a crack made about an older woman. I was aged 40. I concluded from that crack that I needed to credentiate myself. I went home and told my husband, we had a seven-year-old, a six-year-old, and a four-year-old, that I was going law school. He lowered his newspaper and said, “Good”, and put his newspaper back up.

I had an opportunity as a private attorney to attack two systems that I knew really well. One was the University of Michigan, and the other one was the Michigan Democratic Party. And in those attacks, we were eventually successful. And with the help of Bunny Sandler, particularly with regard to the University of Michigan. Other similar institutions across the United States were benefited. And I’m awfully glad that somebody mentioned Catharine East, because if we didn’t have any email, we had her watts line. So what I remember mostly about private practice was the phone calls, because you never knew what was on the other end of the line in ’72, ’73, or ’74. I remember a call from a pregnant woman who said that because she was pregnant, her wages had been reduced 50 cents an hour.

I remembered many others, too, but I think my favorite one was from Grand Rapids. I had received a call from a father who wanted his girl put on a track team in Mona Shores. And Mona Shores is the Eastern shore of Lake Michigan, 200 miles from Ann Arbor. They had a policy of only having men on the high school track team, and the father had been on that track team. So I drove across Michigan to talk to the track coach, and he said he was leery of girls on the track team. I’ve never understood what leery meant.

I drove back to Ann Arbor, drafted a lawsuit, which, of course, included Title IX and appendices State claim on Michigan’s law, because clearly it was illegal on Michigan’s law, drove back to Grand Rapids, filed it, and went back to my office. About a week later, this is my favorite phone call. I got a phone call in a very shaky voice and understand that this lawsuit had landed in front of Noel Fox (United States district judge), who always ruled for Native Americans in Michigan, and was appointed by Truman, and was considered very liberal. The phone call said, “We have opened the track team to girls. We have 40 girls. We have bought 40 sweatshirts. We have bought 40 sweat-pants. We have figured out how they’re going to go to the bathroom. Is there anything else you want?”