Lucy Somerville (Howorth) was born on July 1, 1895. Her mother was Nellie Nugent Somerville, the first woman to serve in the Mississippi Legislature. Howorth’s upbringing in Greenville, Mississippi, was a bit unconventional as Mississippi was not a hotbed of suffrage and yet her mother was a committed suffragist.
She traveled to Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia. Today the institution is know as Randolph College. There, in 1913, she became a member of the Kappa chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, she was also a member of Pi Gamma Mu honor society.
In 1975, she recorded an oral history at the University of North Carolina. Howorth began the interview with this disclaimer:
I wish to make a statement similar to the one that I made when Delta State University initiated a series of tape recordings. It is to this effect, that I have made many mistakes, I have committed blunders, I have done things that I wish I hadn’t done and not done some that I should have, but I am not the type to go dwelling on errors. I think that life has to be lived positively and affirmatively. If I could learn from a mistake, I tried to do so. Otherwise, it was washed out. This may make my tape sound like a pompous egotist, and if so, it just has to be.
She also told this story about her time at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College:
Oh, I went to several of the state conventions and acted as a page and then in the year before I went to college, the spring of 1912, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw came and I went to the state convention where she spoke and then she came . . . well, maybe the convention was in Greenville, but anyhow, she spoke in Greenville. Then when I went on to college that fall, she came to Lynchburg to a meeting and spoke and I arranged, freshman girl that I was, I stirred them up and arranged to have her come out to the college. Now, there’s where I began to run into this narrow-minded business that really burned me up. They wouldn’t let Anna Howard Shaw speak in the college auditorium.
This was the fall of 1912 and I found out, or somebody helped me out, because I was a freshman, that the rule of the college was that the seniors could entertain anybody that they wanted in what was called the Senior Parlor. So, some of the seniors agreed that Dr. Anna Howard Shaw could speak in the parlor and we had a reception for her and we had them hanging out the windows.
Lucy Somerville was part of this effort.
Her post-graduate studies in psychology and economics at Columbia University opened her eyes to life in New York City. She visited settlement houses and sweatshops and those images help shape her future views. She applied to the Columbia University School of Law but her application was denied because she was a woman.
In August of 1920, she drove with her mother from Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee. Their goal was to be there when the 19th Amendment was finally ratified. It happened on August 18, 1920 and they were there.
She went back to Mississippi for law school and was one of two women in her class. She graduated with a LL.B. in 1922 from the University of Mississippi, summa cum laude, and was the first woman admitted to the Mississippi bar. Setting up a practice in Cleveland, Mississippi, she struggled to get clients. A move back to Greenville ensued. She was appointed as a member of the Mississippi Board of Bar Examiners and then as commissioner of a United States District Court. It was through the first appointment that she and a fellow classmate, Joseph M. Howorth, renewed their acquaintance. They married in 1928. Together they worked in Jackson, Mississippi.
A Democrat, Howorth, served as a Hinds County Representative and in the Mississippi State Legislature from 1932-1936. She also served on the Board of Veterans Appeals from July 1934 to April 1943. For five years, from 1949-1954, she was a member of the War Claims Commission, serving as associate general counsel, deputy general counsel, and general counsel. In 1954, she moved back to Cleveland, Mississippi, and practiced law with her husband for another 25 years. John F. Kennedy appointed her to his Commission on the Status of Women.
Early in her alumna life, she served Alpha Omicron Pi as a member of the Executive Committee. In 1985 Alpha Omicron Pi gave her the Elizabeth Heywood Wyman award in recognition of her outstanding success in her profession, the arts and service to humanity.
Joseph Howorth died in 1982. Lucy Somerville Howarth died on August 23, 1997, at the age of 102.
March 1935 To Dragma
