Marion Scudder Griffin 1879-1957

Marion Griffin learned law while working in Judge Thomas M. Scruggs's Memphis office, and in 1900 two local judges certified her for the bar before the Tennessee Supreme Court refused her admission because of her sex. She took a law degree at the University of Michigan, returned, and persuaded the legislature to allow women to practice. Licensed in July 1907, she opened her office in the Goodwyn Institute Building and practiced until 1949. In 1923 she became the first woman to serve in the Tennessee House of Representatives.

What the plaque says

Marion Scudder Griffin 1879-1957 Marion Scudder Griffin, although qualified, was refused a Tennessee law license for seven years solely because she was a woman. In 1907, she became the first woman attorney in Tennessee after she successfully lobbied the legislature to admit women to the practice of law. In 1923, she became the first woman elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives. For many years before she retired in 1949, her law office was located on this site in the Goodwyn Institute Building.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Beale Street — 0.3 mi
  The street that became the center of Black Memphis after the Civil War, home to Church's Park, W. C. Handy, Ida B. Wells and the blues, now a National Historic Landmark district.
• National Civil Rights Museum — 0.8 mi
  The Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968, kept as a museum of the civil rights movement from the nineteenth century to today.
• Sun Studio — 0.8 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.
• 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — 0.9 mi
  A privately funded NAACP marker in a small downtown park, placed in 2016, that names the May 1866 attack on Black South Memphis as a massacre.

More markers nearby

• First Tennessee Bank — steps away
• Washburn's Quarters August 21, 1864 — steps away
• Piggly Wiggly — steps away
• WDIA: The Goodwill Station — steps away