Lorna E. Lockwood

Who was Lorna E. Lockwood?

Lorna Elizabeth Lockwood was a Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court. She was the first female chief justice of a state Supreme Court in the United States. In the 1960s she was considered by President Lyndon Johnson to be the first female justice on the United States Supreme Court. Instead,In June 1967 Johnson appointed Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to serve on the high court., thereby demonstrating, once again, that, in the United States, black men typically advance ahead of white women in civil rights matters.

Lorna Lockwood was born on March 24, 1903, in Douglas, Arizona Territory, to Daisy Maude Lincoln and Alfred Collins Lockwood. Her father was an attorney and later Chief Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court. In 1913, the family moved to Tombstone and Lorna graduated from Tombstone High School in 1920. In 1923, she received her B.A. from the University of Arizona in Tucson and in 1925, her J.D. from the University of Arizona College of Law. The only woman in her class, she was elected President of the Student Bar Association.

Lockwood passed the Arizona State Bar and worked as a legal stenographer from 1925 until 1939. She established the private practice Lockwood & Savage with Loretta Savage. Lockwood was elected to the Arizona House of Representatives in 1939. In 1942, she served as secretary to Congressman John R. Murdock and in 1943 she became District Price Attorney of the Office of Price Administration. Lockwood was re-elected to the Arizona House in 1947 and became the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee. She was appointed Arizona′s Assistant Attorney General in 1948. She was the first woman to hold that position and served there until 1951.