This post is part of the series 13 Ways of Looking at the Northwest. You can find the initial post here.
By Heather Lowcock, Project Archivist, NHPRC Grant – News Tribune Collection
Civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson in his book Just Mercy, introduces the metaphor of a stonecatcher, someone who, acknowledging the realities of injustice, chooses to stand in defense of others and offer a just mercy. The metaphor, taken from the Bible reference--”let he who is without sin cast the first stone”--appears in the book during a speech Stevenson gives, calling on his listeners to not be stone throwers but stonecatchers. Every day, I look at a little slip of paper posted in my apartment that says, “Be a stonecatcher,” and every day I’m trying to learn how to be it.
Women in the Court
In a 1910 Tacoma Times feature “Shall We have Women Judges,” Harriet Wood, a lawyer, and Judge F. B. House debated the question. Judge House argued that women were not made to judge as “the machinery of their minds is not suited” while Wood believed not only that gender had little to do with the “judgement passed by a trained mind” but also that there should be “mixed juries,” contending that women had yet to be tried by a jury of peers as required by law. It’s perhaps best then that Judge House never found himself in the courtrooms of Judges Elizabeth Shackleford and Filis Otto.
“Yes, I’m a women’s libber.” It was 1974 and 80-year-old Elizabeth Shackleford, who retired as a Pierce County District Court Judge in 1967 was still working in private practice. Recalling the strength and political will of her mother and the years before women had a right to vote, Shackleford told the News Tribune reporter, “I don’t look at women’s lib as something handed to women. It’s a responsibility they have to assume. [...] They have the authority. They just have to go in there and do it.”
Shackleford graduated from the College of Puget Sound in 1918 and was admitted to the state bar association in 1922, while “learning the law” by working with her father Judge John Shackleford. Over the years, Shackleford was often one of only a few women attorneys in the Tacoma area. A champion of civic reform and minority and women’s rights, Shackleford often provided legal services, sometimes for free, to those often denied assistance. In 1938, she became the Pierce County Clerk, and in 1954, running with the slogan, “Will Think Well, Then Decide Calmly,” Shackleford won the non-partisan role of Justice of Peace. As a jurist, she oversaw many cases, including early Nisqually fishing rights cases, and also assisted in the establishment of Washington’s joint tenancy rights law. She volunteered with Tacoma’s Model Cities program as well as organizations that sought to empower women, those experiencing poverty, and Black and Indigenous communities. Hear more from Shackleford herself in this oral history.
Filis Otto was elected as a Pierce County District Court Judge in 1967 when Elizabeth Shackleford retired from the bench. She graduated law school at the age of 20. Too young to take the bar exam, she worked as a law clerk for State Supreme Court Judge William Steinert. Once she passed the bar at 21, she continued to work as a clerk and secretary to make enough money to open her own practice. She opened her practice in 1950, and in 1953 covered a temporary opening as a Police Court judge. Otto then served as a District Court Judge for 28 years. While admitting to occasional discouragement--“you may admire the system, but you wonder what good you can do,”--Otto enjoyed her work at the district court, telling the News Tribune in 1974, ”this is where the people are.” She learned to love the law from her grandfather who believed that law is for the people and ”that it is a means of social change.” Sometimes described as “combative” and "unconventional," Otto didn’t suffer fools. After her death, a defense attorney recalled, “If you went in unprepared, she absolutely tore you up…you were going to pay for it.” However, she was also remembered as a mentor--”a woman who showed me I could become anything I wanted to be.”
Judicial Inequity
Aware of the rarity of experiences like Shackleford and Otto for women and minorities in law, communities in Pierce County also fought to challenge the status quo. In April 1990, students at the University of Puget Sound Law School boycotted classes and held a sit-in and rally on campus to protest the lack of minorities and women among the law faculty. Law student Laurie Jinkins told the News Tribune, “What we’re really asking for is an end to the racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism at all law schools.” Their own school in 1990 had two tenured women faculty members and one of them was the law librarian. Jenkins’ research into the law school’s hiring practices at the time discovered that 55% of men hired to teach were likely to gain tenure in comparison to 16% of women.
In September 1991, nearly three dozen Pierce County lawyers established the Minority Attorney’s Bar Association to support and lobby for the appointment of minority judges to the Pierce County District and Municipal Courts. Although these positions are typically decided by election, the bar association noted that 80% of the current judges initially received their roles by appointment and then ran for re-election, where judicial incumbents often hold an advantage. By December 1991, the first minority judge, Sergio Armijo, was appointed to the Municipal Court. Armijo was re-elected, and in 1994 became the first minority to be appointed to the Superior Court.
Prisons
The stories of McNeil Island and its federal penitentiary are varied. The island, first used for trade and fishing by indigenous communities, was homesteaded by the Meeker family in the 1850s. The federal government opened the island prison as a territorial jail in 1875, and it remained in federal hands after Washington statehood in 1889. Parcels of the island were purchased to add a working farm and additional buildings. By 1940 the entire island was under federal control. A lake was formed in 1944 as well as a community center and school for the children of island residents working at the prison. The first day of school was in 1952. Over its 136 years as a federal penitentiary, it held the likes of Teamster President Dave Beck and Robert “Birdman of Alcatraz” Stroud. In 1980, 350 Cuban refugees from the Mariel boatlift were detained at McNeil and a young Washington immigration lawyer, Eleanor Hoague sought to make sure they had representation during their deportation hearings. The island is now within the Nisqually Reach Nature Reserve and currently undergoing habitat and shoreline restoration.
What is perhaps most revelatory about McNeil and its island prison comes from The Island Lantern, a periodical written and published by those incarcerated at McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary from 1939 until 1980. The periodical includes editorials like one in 1941 contending that long prison sentences are harmful to both the prisoner and society and another disagreeing with the blacklisting of workers with criminal histories from labor unions. There are feature articles, including a 1941 critique of American complacency and appeasement as the author J.T. James states, “Don’t shirk, don’t fail to do the things you want to do but couldn’t if you were under Nazism.” The Island Lantern also includes book and art reviews, thoughtful interviews with the prison chief of psychology and the secretary to the warden, and historical accounts of McNeil Island and its habitat. The final issue in 1980 confronts, in part, the emotions felt by some of those incarcerated who would be losing access to programs and relationships when they were relocated to other federal prisons. And in a final editorial, Dave Orlob wonders about the possibility of prison reform. With all the advances made in the world, he wonders, “Will [prisons] ever be anything but cold storage for human meat?”
In 1981, the state took possession of McNeil Island Penitentiary on lease from the federal government to assist with overcrowding in other facilities. The McNeil Island Correctional Center remained open until 2011. However, issues of overcrowding, a consequence of policies of mass incarceration, extended to the county and local levels during that same period. After a Pierce County Jail Commission report in the late 1970s called for changes to prison facilities, staffing, and supervisory policy, planning began for the construction of a new Pierce County Jail. By the time it opened in 1986, it was already at overcapacity. The National Guard Armory, now the site of Tacoma Arts Live, became a “temporary jail to handle overflow” in 1989. Restructured to hold 300 people in triple bunks it remained open until 1995. That same year, the News Tribune reported on some of the effects of overcrowding at the county's facilities: 165 women were being held in a space meant for 60 and the laundry, kitchen, and bathroom facilities for all incarcerated were overwhelmed, limiting the effectiveness of these basic human services.
Additional documents related to justice, including materials related to law and the prison system can be found in the Tacoma Police Department Records, the papers of Tacoma mayors, city council resolutions and meeting minutes, as well as the Bertha Snell Papers and an oral history about Nelda Jaeger-Kraemer, one of the first women to graduate from the University of Washington Law School.
The digitization and processing of the News Tribune Photograph Collection was supported by a grant from the National Historic Publications and Records Commission at the National Archives.
Sources:
Ainscough, Margaret. (1974, November 19). Judge Filis Otto reflects on long road to the bench. The News Tribune.
Anderson, Betty. (1981, August 30). Shackleford says goodbye. The News Tribune.
Burkly, Anne Kane and Steve Dunkleberger. (2019). McNeil Island. Arcadia Publishing.
Cardwell, Rod. (1969, November 3). 'Tacoma's never been too quiet." The News Tribune.
Ferguson, Howard. (1974, October 17). Early Libber Starts to Taper Off. The News Tribune.
George, Kathy. (1989, September 6). Ex-judge, lawyer Elizabeth Shackleford dies. The News Tribune.
Gillie, Jack. (1995, July 30). County employing variety of patches to makes its overburdened jail function. The News Tribune.
Gillie, John. (1991, September 6). Bench mark: Minority attorneys’ group organizes campaign to end all-white judiciary. The News Tribune.
Gordon, Susan. (1990, April 5). UPS law school protest planned. The News Tribune.
Lynn, Adam. (2006, April 7). Combative judge ‘was a character and a half.’ The News Tribune.
McClary, Daryl C. (2003, April 17). McNeil Island and the Federal Penitentiary, 1841-1981. HistoryLink. https://www.historylink.org/File/5238
McClary, Daryl C. (2003, April 24). McNeil Island and the Federal Penitentiary, 1881-present. HistoryLink. https://www.historylink.org/File/5239
McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary Prisoners. (1939-1980). The Island Lantern [periodical]. The Island Lantern (5.2.25). Tacoma Public Library, Northwest Room, Tacoma, WA, United States.
News Tribune readers. (2006, April 14). The late Filis Otto was a judge to behold. The News Tribune.
Parker, Mike. (1947-2019). Jail Commission and Correspondence [subject files]. Mayor Mike Parker Papers (1.2.2). Tacoma Public Library, Northwest Room, Tacoma, WA, United States.
Pyle, Jack. (1978, May 5). ‘Grave Danger’ in jail, report claims. The News Tribune.
Shannon, Marcia. (1974, December 26). Epitome of ‘Portia.’ The News Tribune.
Wood, Mrs. Harriet J. and F. B. House. (1910, August 5). Shall we have women judges. The Tacoma Times.
