Viola Ross Napier

Viola Ross Napier (1881–1962) was one of the first two women to be elected into the House of Representatives in the U.S. state of Georgia shortly following the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which gave women the right to vote. Bessie Kempton was the other female elected into the House of Representatives during the same time. Napier was also the first female lawyer to argue in front of the Georgia Court of Appeals and the Georgia Supreme Court.^[1]

Early life

Viola R. Napier was born in Macon, Georgia on February 14, 1881. Her grandfather from her mothers side was one of the city’s founders. After graduating in 1901 from Wesleyan College,^[2] she became a school teacher. During her teaching career she met and married a lawyer, Hendley Napier Jr., in 1907. They had four children together. Shortly after, her husband died due in the flu epidemic of 1919. After losing both her husband and father-in-law, she decided to go back to school and She attended Judge “Lije” Maynard’s night school and studied there to become a lawyer.^[3]

Legislature life

It was uncommon for women in the early 1900s to become lawyers, and Napier found it very difficult to obtain a job. As a female lawyer, with no job offerings, she decided to open her own practice. She became the first female lawyer to argue in front of both the Georgia Court of Appeals and the Georgia Supreme Court. Napier also became the first female to win a pardon for a convicted client before the client served any of their sentence.

After the approval of the 19th Amendment in 1922 that allowed women to vote, Napier was convinced by the editor of the Macon News to run for General Assembly and hence became one of the first two women to be welcomed into the House of Representatives in Georgia. During her time in legislation she introduced several bills that were sponsored by the League of Women Voters,an organization that encouraged women to use their new power to participate in shaping public policy.^[4] The bills included compulsory education legislation, child labor legislation, and the legislative recommendations of the Children’s Code Commission. She secured adoption of laws requiring better fire protection in orphanages, schools and children’s hospitals. She also sponsored a bill to improve education for the blind, the handicapped and the underprivileged and introduced a bill to prevent child labor.

Napier remained in the House of Representatives for a second term and was then defeated when she ran for a third term.

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