Martha Wright Griffiths (January 29, 1912 – April 22, 2003) was an American lawyer and judge before being elected to the

United States House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the Bicameralism, bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Artic ...

in 1954. Griffiths was the first woman to serve on the House Committee on Ways and Means and the first woman elected to the

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature, legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, including a Lower house, lower body, the United States House of Representatives, ...

from

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

as a member of the Democratic Party. She was "instrumental" in including the prohibition of sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1982, Griffiths was also the first woman elected lieutenant governor of Michigan, as Matilda Dodge Wilson had been appointed the first female lieutenant governor of Michigan in 1939.

Life and career

Martha Edna Wright was born in Pierce City, Missouri. She attended public schools and went on to graduate with a B.A. from the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou or MU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri, United States. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Univers ...

in 1934. She chose to continue her education by studying law and graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1940. She married Hicks George Griffiths (July 9, 1940 – March 4, 1996), a lawyer and a judge as well as chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party from 1949 to 1950. She worked as a lawyer in private practice, then in the legal department of the American Automobile Insurance Co. in

Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

from 1941 to 1942 and then as the Ordnance District contract negotiator from 1942 to 1946. She was elected to the Michigan House of Representatives, serving from 1949 to 1953 for the Wayne County 1st district. In 1953, she was appointed as recorder and judge of the Recorder's Court in Detroit and sat as judge from 1953 to 1954, the first woman to do so. In 1954, Griffiths was elected as a Democrat from Michigan's 17th congressional district to the 84th Congress and was subsequently re-elected to the nine following Congresses, serving from January 3, 1955, to December 31, 1974, in the U.S. House. She sat as a delegate at the Democratic National Convention in

1956 Events January * January 1 – The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ends in Sudan after 57 years. * January 8 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. evangelical Christian Missionary, missionaries, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, E ...

as well as in 1968. She was not a candidate for re-election to the 94th Congress in 1974.

Equal Rights Amendment

During her time in Congress, Griffiths sponsored the

Equal Rights Amendment The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was a proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States, United States Constitution that would explicitly prohibit sex discrimination. It is not currently a part of the Constitution, though its Ratifi ...

, one of 33 proposed amendments to pass in Congress and be sent to the states for ratification, and among the six that were not ratified. ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' described her as "the mother of the Equal Rights Amendment", adding:

The weapons she deployed during her 10-term congressional career included implacable determination, a lawyer's grasp of procedural niceties, and a tongue like a blacksmith's rasp.

Quote

"I don't know really that I have so much perseverance as I do a sense of indignity at the fact that women are not justly treated. I have the same sort of feeling for Blacks, Latinos and the Asiatics. If we are America, then we ought to be what we say we are. We ought to be the land of the free and the brave. What people sought in this land was justice."
"Some of that I get from my father. I adored my father. My father thought that girls were smarter than boys, which was unusual in my day and age."

Post-Congressional career as lieutenant governor

After her congressional service, Griffiths returned to the practice of law and then served as the 59th lieutenant governor of Michigan from 1983 to 1991 on the ticket of Governor James Blanchard. She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1983 and to the National Women's Hall of Fame a decade later in 1993. She retired to her home in Armada, Michigan, where she lived until her death in 2003 at age 91. Martha Griffiths was a member of the

American Association of University Women The American Association of University Women (AAUW), officially founded in 1881, is a non-profit organization that advances Justice, equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, and research. The organization has a nationwide Social net ...

. The AAUW of Michigan named its "Martha Griffiths Equity Award" in her honor.

References

The Political Graveyard

External links