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First woman elected to state legislature dies
On this day in 1966, Edith Wilmans, who in 1922 became the first woman
elected to the Texas legislature, died in Dallas. Wilmans, born in
Louisiana in 1882, moved to Dallas at an early age. She helped organize
the Dallas Equal Suffrage Association and was president of the
Democratic Women's Association of Texas. To learn more about the legal
problems involved in improving the status of women and children, she
studied law and in 1918 was admitted to the bar. She served only one
term in the legislature, and in 1924 and 1926 she ran unsuccessfully for
governor. In 1925 Governor Pat M. Neff appointed her to the All-Woman
Supreme Court, but she was disqualified from serving because she lacked
by a few months the required seven years' experience in the practice of
law. She ran for the legislature again in 1935 but was defeated. She
also ran for congress in 1948 and again in a 1951 special election but
lost both races.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- WILMANS, EDITH EUNICE THERREL
- TEXAS LEGISLATURE
- ALL-WOMAN SUPREME COURT
- TEXAS IN THE 1920S
- WOMEN AND POLITICS
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Famed mustanger and filibuster killed (1801)
- Preservationist and former Indian captive Rebecca Fisher dies (1926)
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