Queer Places:
Harmony Grove Cemetery, 11455 Locke Rd, Lockeford, CA 95237
Laura
de Force Gordon (née Laura de Force; August 17, 1838 – April 5,
1907) was a California lawyer, newspaper publisher, and a prominent
suffragette. She was the first woman to run a daily newspaper in the
United States (the Stockton Daily Leader, 1874), and the second female
lawyer admitted to practice in California. In May 1879, Gordon left a copy of her pamphlet The Great Geysers of
California and How to Reach Them in a
time
capsule buried in
San Francisco's Washington Square park. Gordon wrote inside the flyleaf:
If this little book should see the light after its 100 years of
entombment, I would like its readers to know that the author was a lover
of her own sex and devoted the best years of her life in striving for the
political equality and social and moral elevation of women.
Gordon's inscription was read aloud in public after the time capsule was
opened in April 1979.[26]
Armistead Maupin, who was present when the time capsule was opened,
speculated that the quotation's use of "lover of her own sex" could have been
a "coming
out" for Gordon, but also acknowledged the phrase could have been an
"idiosyncrasy of 19th century speech".[26]
The quotation was later used in
Randy Shilts' biography of gay San Francisco politician
Harvey
Milk, "Mayor
of Castro Street".[27]
As an activist, Gordon was a key proponent of the
Woman Lawyer's Bill, which allowed women to practice law in California.
She also pushed for the inclusion of a section in the
California Constitution that prohibited the state from barring women from
practicing any profession.
Laura de Force Gordon (née Laura de Force) was born in
North East, Pennsylvania, on August 17, 1838, to Abram de Force and
Catherine Doolittle Allen. The family had nine children. Her father struggled
with
rheumatism, but the children (including at least two daughters) received
education in the public schools.[1][2]:5–6
After the death of one of the children, the family turned to
Spiritualism in 1855.[2]:6
Gordon toured the
Northeast of the United States giving public speeches, starting as young
as 15,[2]:6
including a speech in
Boston at
age 18.[3]
During one such event, she met a Scottish physician named Charles H. Gordon,
and married him in 1862.[1][3]
They moved west gradually, first to
New Orleans (where he was posted during the
Civil War),[4]
then to Nevada,[5]
and finally settling in
California in 1870.[1]
Before 1878, she divorced her husband on grounds of adultery.[1]
She later referred to herself frequently as a widow, rather than a divorcée,
since widowhood was "a more acceptable explanation ... for ... lack of male
protection".[6]:24
In 1873, Gordon became an editor and reporter for the Stockton Narrow
Gauge. In 1874, she bought the Stockton Weekly Leader and converted
into a daily newspaper,[a]
becoming the first female publisher of a paper in the United States.[7][8]
Between 1876 and 1878, she published the Oakland Daily Democrat.[3]
During that period, she also served as a correspondent for the Sacramento Bee
and other papers, with a press desk on the floor of the state
Assembly.[1][6]:27
She also served as an organizer of the Pacific Coast Press Association.[9]
In the late 1860s, Gordon's speaking career turned from Spiritualism to
women's rights, perhaps influenced by Spiritualism's emphasis on
egalitarianism and
equality between the sexes. Gordon's February 19, 1868 speech in
San Francisco, titled "The Elective Franchise: Who Shall Vote", was the
first in California on the
suffrage movement.[2]:7–8[10]
It attracted a healthy crowd, some of whom went on to become leaders in
California's suffrage movement.[2]:7–8
In 1870, she helped found the California
Women's Suffrage Society, and gave more than 100 speeches on suffrage.[11][12]:13[13]
Gordon also worked for suffrage in Nevada, speaking throughout the state in
the late 1860s and in front of the
state legislature in 1871.[14]
Gordon also traveled outside of the Southwest, representing California at the
1872
National Woman Suffrage Association in
New York City.[15]
At the
1872 Liberal Republican convention, alongside
Susan B. Anthony, she asked the party to seat her as a representative from
California (to "laughter") and submitted a pro-suffrage resolution.[16][17][18]
After beginning her legal career in 1879, she continued her suffrage
activism. She was elected president of the California State Suffrage
Association from 1884–1894, and a paid speaker on behalf of the movement in
the 1888 presidential election.[19]
In 1892, she spoke at the
Columbian Exposition in Chicago.[20]
Gordon was considered part of the "radical" branch of women's suffrage
activists,[12]:15
in part because of her divorce and association with Spiritualism.[21]
Her correspondents included
Henry George[9]
and Susan B. Anthony.[3]
As a result of her suffrage and publishing work, Gordon was well known in
California political circles, and even received 200 votes for
State Senate in 1871.[3]:216
This positioned her, along with fellow suffragette
Clara Shortridge Foltz, to manage the lobbying campaign for the Woman
Lawyer's Bill, which granted women the right to practice law in California in
January 1878. Gordon used her position as a journalist covering the debate to
stay in touch with lawmakers and lobby the governor for the final signature.[6]:27–29[22]
Later in 1878, Gordon was nominated as a delegate to the
California Constitutional Convention, but was defeated.[3]
Despite not being elected as a delegate, during the convention, in February
1879, Gordon and Foltz successfully pushed for the inclusion of Article XX,
Section 18, of the Constitution. This clause prohibited state law from barring
women from entering any "lawful business, avocation, or profession".[23][6]:53
At around the same time, in January 1879, Gordon and Foltz were briefly
admitted to the recently opened
Hastings College of the Law. However, on the third day of classes, they
were asked to leave, in part because the school's Dean felt their "rustling
skirts" bothered the male students.[6]:44
In February, the women filed and argued a case that persuaded the state's
Supreme Court to overturn that decision.[b][6]:54
However, because of work, activism, and family obligations, neither Gordon nor
Foltz were able to graduate, and so the first graduate of Hastings was
Mary McHenry Keith.[3][6]:88
At that time, law school graduation was not necessary for bar admission, so
Gordon studied on her own. On December 6, 1879, she was admitted to the
State Bar of California, becoming the second female attorney in the state
(after Foltz).[6]:62
In 1880 she established her own firm in San Francisco, where she specialized
in general and criminal law. Her work included successful defenses in several
murder cases.[1][6]:77[9]
She was also the first woman in California to argue a case to a jury.[6]:77
This work attracted national attention, particularly in the case of George
Wheeler, where Gordon assisted the defense and Foltz the prosecution, leading
New York's National Police Gazette to write that it was a case where "two
females will be allowed to wag their tongues to their heart's content".[6]:75–77[24]
On February 3, 1883, Gordon became the second woman to be admitted to the
bar of the
United States Supreme Court, after
Belva Lockwood.[11][25]
Gordon retired from the legal profession in 1901, and spent her last years
on her farm in
Lodi, California.[11]
Her health deteriorated in 1906 after the premature death of her grandchild.
She caught
pneumonia in March 1907, and died in Lodi on April 5, 1907.[2]:21
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