Thursday, November 6, 2008

Sandra Day O'Connor

People may say, "It only takes a man to change history!" But in this case it took a woman. Sandra Day O’Connor was a very brilliant woman who changed history in America forever and ever. Justice O'Connor was the first woman to be appointed into the Supreme Court by former president Ronald Reagan. She is a huge example of a person who is loyal to her country and she stood up as a woman to make a change. Despite the fact that she went trough a lot as a child, it was hard to find a job through her young years, and she struggled with breast cancer she still made it through her hard times and she will forever keep and leave a legacy for me and others to come.
In 1848 the women’s right convention had started because women felt that they were not being treated right and that they did not have any rights. The convention adopted a “Declaration of Principles,” deliberately modeled on the Declaration of Independence, which stated, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal . . .” In addition to the Declaration of Principles, the Seneca Convention also asserted that women should have the right to preach, to be educated, to teach, and to earn a living. With these words the struggle began in earnest to win full voting rights for women in the United States. Rather than focusing on issues of justice or equal rights, they argued instead that women would bring their moral superiority and maternal instincts into the often-brutal arena of politics. This bit of information very much includes Sandra Day O’Connor because she fought for the spot that women wanted which was to be included in politics.
Sandra Day O’Connor was born in Texas on March 26,1930 to Harry A. Day and Ada Mae Wilkey Day. She grew up on the Lazy B Ranch, which was 198,000 acres of land with more that 2,000 cattle, twenty-five miles form the town of Duncan in southeastern Arizona. Her grandfather, Henry Clay Day, had founded the ranch in the early 1880s thirty years before Arizona had gained statehood. The ranch house was a four-bedroom adobe building and it did not have running water or electricity until Sandra Day O’Connor was seven years old. In the great depression years the family suffered but at the end the ranch eventually prospered. Her childhood friends were her parents, ranch hands, a bobcat, and a few javelina hogs. Since their neighbors lived 25miles away, the family spent most of their days in isolation. Her brother and sister were not born until she was eight years old, which meant that she spent many of her childhood years an only child. She learned how to drive at the age of seven and she could fire riffles and ride horses proficiently by the time she was eight.
When Sandra reached the school age her parents sent her to live with her grandmother in El Paso. Sandra attended the Radford School, a private academy for girls, from kindergarten through high school. Suffering from extreme homesickness, she withdrew and returned to Arizona for a year. Still, she graduated with good marks at the age of sixteen. She went to Stanford to study economics in 1950 and then later she studied law. She met her husband at her editor job at Stanford Law Review. They eventually got married after their graduation. It only took her two years to finish collage, which usually takes three years and she finished in third place of her class.
When she came out of law school she was offered a job as a legal secretary. Instead she took a job as a deputy attorney general. In 1953 her husband who was a lawyer was drafted into the Judge Advocate General's Court. So that meant that they had to move to Frankfurt Germany. She then served as a civilian attorney for the Quartermaster Market Center from 1954-1957. They then returned to Arizona an O'Connor could not find a private law firm to work at so she started her own practice. In 1965 she took the position as an assistant attorney general of Arizona and in three years she was appointed to Arizona's state senate. She was re-elected two more times as senate of Arizona. She became the first republican women to be a majority leader in the country in 1974. In the same year she was elected judge of the Maricopa County Superior Court where she served until 1979 then she was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals. She was then nominated by President Reagan in 1981 to be in the Supreme Court.
Sandra Day O’Connor ties into the NHD theme “The Individual in History” in many ways. She is that individual, not only in history but that individual that changed history. If it weren’t for Sandra Day O’Connor women would not be able to even be in the Supreme Court as a judge. She took a huge step to move not only herself but also others forward. We should care about Sandra Day O’Connor a lot because she at one time was making the laws of the United States being as though she was a woman. I believe that she will forever be a famous person because she means a lot to many people. She will leave a huge legacy because women were at times put in the back seat and were not treated right. The were always taught to stay home, cook, take care of the children, and do things that did not take any authority. So she left that legacy of saving us as woman and made a change that will forever be that women are now allowed to be a judge in the Supreme Court.

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