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Weekly 150: Martha Craig Daughtrey

Trailblazer of the Judiciary

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Throughout history, women have faced diversity. It has taken women of a special nature to tear down the walls blocking their path and have had to shatter many a glass ceiling. One such woman from Tennessee history is Martha Craig Daughtrey. She is one of the leaders in firsts for women across the state. From being the first female U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee in Nashville to the first Tennessee State Supreme Court Justice.

She was born Martha Craig Kirko on July 21, 1942, in Covington, Kentucky. Around the age of two, her father died from blood poisoning. Martha and her mother move sto Franklin, Tennessee to live with her maternal mother. In 1947, her mother remarried with the family returning to Covington.

After graduating high school, Martha decided to enroll at Vanderbilt University as an English major. While at Vanderbilt she started her record of firsts when she was elected the first female president pro tempore of the student senate. In 1963, she married Larry Daughtrey. The following year, her senior year, she was accepted and began taking classes at Vanderbilt Law School. She remarked, “When I came to Vanderbilt, I had never laid eyes on a woman lawyer, and I ended up being the only woman in my first-year section.”

Daughtrey was one of three females accepted into the program. She was also pregnant at the time. After giving birth to her daughter, Sarah Carran Daughtrey, she left law school for two years as the new family could not afford someone to keep her. In 1968, after being taken back on scholarship to Vanderbilt, she graduated eighth in the class. Then, she faced the task of finding employment.

“The Nashville firms were so small at the time that no one was willing to take on a woman,” she said. “As the time came for me to graduate, and I still didn’t have a job. Aubrey Harwell was getting very nervous, and he took it upon himself to try to help me by giving me his endorsement. ‘Well, she’s small, and kind of thin and looks very young, but she’s mean as a snake,’ he said, and this was of course meant to help me.”

Her goal was to practice law in a private practice firm. Daughtrey was forced to hang out her own shingle sharing a one-room office with two other attorneys. It wasn’t long before she knocked down another wall becoming the first woman Assistant U.S. Attorney. Daughtrey was hired by U.S. Attorney Gilbert S. Merritt, Jr. There she worked with Fred Thompson, the late Senator and presidential candidate. The position was short-lived as she and Merritt left the U.S. Attorney’s office after newly elected President Richard Nixon replaced Merritt with a Republican appointee in 1969.

Daughtrey quickly landed on her feet joining the Davidson County District Attorney’s Office. She was assigned to general sessions and worked regularly in Adolpho Birch’s courtroom. Birch was the first black judge in Tennessee. For three years, she became a prominent fixture in the Tenth Judicial Circuit Court.

In 1972, Daughtrey was lured away from the district attorney’s office by Dean John Wade. She accepted a position as Vanderbilt’s first tenure-track woman law professor. Along with her teaching obligations, she developed the Women Law Students Association. She once said that the rationale for starting the association reminded her “how hard it is to establish yourself as a serious professional when the level of acceptance by your colleagues reduces you to ridicule or, at best, bemused toleration.”

Daughtrey spent only three years teaching full-time before she was appointed to the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals. She recalled, “I became a woman judge at a time when, in fact, I had never laid eyes on another woman judge.”

In 1990, Governor Ned McWherter appointed her as the first woman associate justice on the Tennessee Supreme Court. She won a statewide election for the seat later that year.

Tennessee Supreme Court Chief Justice Jeff Bivins spoke about her groundbreaking work, “Prior to Judge Daughtrey’s appointment, the perspective of approximately one-half of the citizens of Tennessee was not taken into account on the Tennessee Supreme Court. She was the trailblazer to bring the perspective there that has now become commonplace on our court.”

Three years later in 1993, Vice President Al Gore recommended her for a seat on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, to which she was appointed by President Bill Clinton. She continued her role in firsts as the first woman from Tennessee to sit on that court and the third woman on the court as a whole. Her work involved a strenuous schedule of travel between Nashville and Cincinnati, Ohio. In 2009, she achieved senior status (semi-retirement for United States federal judges) and continues to serve in that position.

Not only has Judge Daughtrey been a trailblazer for women in the courtroom, but she has also held numerous positions in legal associations. She has served as president of the National Association of Women Judges (1985-86), a director of the Nashville Bar Association (1988-90), and a board member of the American Judicature Society (1988-92). She also served on the Council of the American Bar Association’s Section on Legal Education, which is the accrediting body for America’s law schools.