my new home... and the woman behind it.

The Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center is where I am serving my time. It was called the Criminal Courts Building until it was renamed in 2002 after Clara S. Foltz (1849-1934).

Who is she? I go this info from wikipedia:

...after being denied admission to Hastings College of the Law because of her gender, she sued, argued her own case, and won admission. She passed the bar exam in 1878, but California law at the time allowed only white males to become members of the bar. Foltz authored a state bill which replaced "white male" with "person," and in September 1878, she was the first woman admitted to the California bar. She later also became licensed to practice law in New York.

At the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, during a "congress" of the Board of Lady Managers, Foltz introduced her idea of the public defender, with a speech entitled "Rights of Persons Accused of Crime--Abuses Now Existing." Foltz's then-radical concept of providing assistance to indigent criminal defendants is used today throughout the United States. She also created a similar model for the California Parole System.

Not satisfied with becoming a hometown attorney, Foltz became a leader in the woman’s voting rights movement. During a career that spanned 56 years, Clara almost single-handedly pushed a great deal of progressive legislation for women’s rights in the voting and legal fields.

Her many other trail-blazing accomplishments included becoming the first female clerk for the State Judiciary Committee; the first woman appointed to the State Board of Corrections; the first female licensed Notary Public; the first woman named director of a major bank; and, in 1930, the first woman to run for Governor of California, at the age of eighty-one.

In 1910, she was appointed to the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office, becoming the first female deputy district attorney in the United States. She was active in the suffrage movement, authoring the Women's Vote Amendment for California in 1911. Foltz also raised five children, mostly as a single mother, and encouraged women not to overlook their traditional domestic roles.

Wow. Go Clara!