For most of her 85 years, Sarah Leverette has helped improve human rights
By Rachel Haynie
Attorney/realtor Sarah Leverette has often said she and the League of Women Voters (LWV) grew up together. This weekend both will be recognized for their contributions over the last 85 years.
Leverette was described in her friend Ruth Cupp’s 2003 book on SC’s first female lawyers as having had the greatest influence on legal writing in this state in the 20th century. In
Portia Steps Up to the Bar
, Cupp noted that Leverette taught every law student at USC for a quarter century. For most of those years she was also the law school librarian.
Leverette was born within months of the League of Women Voter’s 1919 founding. A year earlier, the SC Supreme Court had admitted the first woman to the practice of law, and women were given the right to vote as a result of the first wave of feminism.
Columbia LWV president Cynthia Flynn said the organization, then considered the mighty political experiment, was formed to help 20 million American women carry out their new responsibility as voters.
As a historical reference, when Leverette graduated from Anderson Junior College in 1938, the SC Supreme Court declared the marriage of a man and woman as a true joint venture between two individuals, equal before the law.
At USC, Leverette graduated magna cum laude. She graduated from law school three years later and at the same time, the first woman, a lawyer, was being accepted into the American military.
Leverette’s first professional job was doing legal research for the SC Department of Labor, but the law school dean lured her back to campus in 1947 to be librarian at USC’s School of Law.
Leverette was sent to Columbia University to learn legal research and law library administration. In 1957, she became the first woman member of the law school faculty. That same year, federal legislation put the names of women and African Americans in federal jury pools.
Leverette became president of the Columbia League of Women Voters in 1958. Nearly a decade later, women’s names were put in the jury pool in SC state courts. In 1968 as the second wave of feminism was recognized in SC, Jean H. Toal was admitted to the bar and in 2000 became the first woman chief of SC Supreme Court. In 1969, the SC legislature added 19th amendment allowing women to vote on the books.
Leverette became commissioner of the SC Industrial Commission in 1972. In 1976–77 she began a two–year tenure as chairman of the Industrial Commission.
In her retirement Leverette became licensed as a realtor. At 85 she actively keeps office hours and is considered a formidable ally of human rights, especially women’s rights.
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