Jennie LoitmanBarron
Jennie Loitman Barron became a lawyer before women had the right to serve on juries in her state and went on to become the first woman justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court. Despite working to put herself through high school and college, Barron was valedictorian of her high school at fifteen and earned her law degree at twenty. While still in college, she organized the Boston University Equal Suffrage League, and later lobbied for the right of women to serve as jurors. She opened her own law practice in 1914, making it a joint practice with her husband when she married four years later. In 1934, she was appointed assistant attorney general of Massachusetts, becoming the first woman to try a major criminal case in the state. Beyond her career in the criminal justice system, she worked as the first president of the Women’s Division of the American Jewish Congress and a national board member of Hadassah, among other responsibilities. Appointed a Superior Court Justice in 1957, she served on the bench until a week before her death at age seventy-seven.
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Boston, MA
United States
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Jewish Women's Archive. "Jennie Loitman Barron." (Viewed on December 7, 2019) <https://jwa.org/people/barron-jennie>.