First Woman: Justice Alma Wilson

The Oklahoman had a nice Oklahoma Heritage piece today honoring Alma Wilson. As it is an ad paid for by BancFirst, Chesapeake, and the Oklahoma Heritage Association, I don't think I can link to it. (If anyone can show me how, please do!) So I will quote:

Alma Wilson was born in Pauls Valley. When she was 8, Wilson decided she wanted to be a lawyer, just like her father, an very unusal aspiration for a little girl in the 1920s.

Women had only just attained the right to vote with the nineteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This was also an unusual time i history because World War I had just ended. Many people said it was the war to end all wars.

Wilson, however, graduated from college and went on to law school. At that time, only 2.4 percent of lawyers in the United States were women. She married a lawyer by the name of Bill Wilson.


In 1983, Gov. George Nigh appointed her as a justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court. In 1997, she became the Chief Justice. Wilson was the first women to serve as the Chief justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court.