Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Exum Clement, Attorney at Law About this episode Lillian Exum Clement Stafford was one of the first women in North Carolina to practice law, and the first woman in the South to be elected to a state legislature.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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2:15 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:26 Tracy V. Wilson? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:29 Holly Frey? And I'm Holly Frey.
2:31 Tracy V. Wilson? Today's subject is somebody I heard about for the first time on an episode of the podcast, Old Gods of Appalachia. This was in their paid subscribers feed. It is Lilian Exum Clement Stafford, who went by Exum or Ex, and she was the first woman in Asheville, North Carolina, to practice law and the first woman in the South to be elected to a state legislature. They gave a really brief description of her in this kind of Ask Me Anything subscriber episode that they did, and I immediately wanted to know more, both because of those basics that I just said and the fact that she lived in Asheville, specifically one of my favorite places. So here we are.
3:13 Holly Frey? Exum Clement Stafford's story starts with a question that we have been running into a lot on recent episodes, which is, when exactly was she born? Sources agree on March 12th, but not on the year. We usually have the opposite where they know the year, but the date is fuzzy. A little variety. According to the 1900 census, Exum Clement was born in 1886, making her 14 when that census was taken. Then the 1920 census lists ages, but not years, and that one reported Lilian E. Clement as a 22-year-old stenographer. Apart from the fact that in 1920 she was a lawyer, those ages don't
3:56 Holly Frey? quite line up. Later in her life, though, the gap gets a lot bigger. Her 1921 marriage license listed her age as 27. That would mean she had been born in 1894, eight years later than the year that's listed on the 1900 census. And this isn't even all of the discrepancies involved in her birth record. Her death certificate says that she was born in 1892, and her gravestone gives a whole other year, which is 1888.
4:26 Tracy V. Wilson? There's some speculation here, and it's totally possible that she was presenting herself as younger earlier on, but a much later birth year started appearing in writing around the time she got married. Her husband was only 26 when they got married, and it was already pretty unusual for a 35-year-old woman to be getting married for the first time. So it's possible that she presented herself as younger than she was because she thought people were going to be suspicious of her getting married to such a much younger man. Again, that's speculative, but this discrepancy does mean that there are a lot of more recent articles that are unaware of this discrepancy and comment on how very young she was when
5:11 Tracy V. Wilson? she reached various milestones and achievements in her life. But if she really was born in the 1880s and not the 1890s, she would have been a lot older, or at least a bit older than those startlingly young ages.
5:25 Holly Frey? Exum's father was George Washington Clement, who was a carpenter and a cabinetmaker. His family had been living in Orange County, North Carolina, near Hillsborough, prior to the Civil War, on a plantation with a workforce of about 100 enslaved people. The Civil War ended when George was about 13, and over the course of the war, the plantation was destroyed, and his mother and one of his siblings died of typhoid. Eventually, in 1887, he moved to western North Carolina, where he met a widow named Sarah Elizabeth Burnett, and they got married in 1879.
6:03 Tracy V. Wilson? George and Sarah had eight children together, and a lot of sources say that Exum was the sixth, but that seems to be based on a later birth year. If she was really born in 1886, she probably would have been the fourth child. The family lived in the North Fork Valley of the Swananoa River, near Black Mountain, and the children went to the one-room North Fork School. Today, a lot of this is underwater. It was flooded in the creation of the North Fork Reservoir, which today provides most of Asheville's water supply.
6:36 Holly Frey? In 1899, the family moved to Biltmore, which is now part of Asheville. The house at Biltmore Estate, which is the truly gigantic home of George Washington Vanderbilt, had been completed in 1895, and afterward Vanderbilt had embarked on the creation of a model town, patterned after a quaint European village. This included the Episcopal Cathedral of All Souls, finished in 1896, and Biltmore Parish Day School, finished in 1898. George Clement was hired to help build the village, and buildings that were still to come included the post office and homes meant to house the workers at Biltmore Estate.
7:17 Tracy V. Wilson? After the family moved to Biltmore, Exum, who was about 13, continued her education at the day school, which had a lot more resources than that one-room school in Norfolk. Her interests and activities there included drama and debate. She also enjoyed hiking in the mountains, and she loved plants and developed a reputation as a naturalist.
7:40 Holly Frey? Her father's work also connected her and her sisters to another resource. That was George Vanderbilt's wife, Edith. Edith was a philanthropist who took an interest in the well-being of her husband's employees and the staff at the estate, which included an interest in Exum and her siblings. In 1900, when Exum was confirmed at the Cathedral of All Souls, she received a Bible as a gift, which was inscribed, "For Exum Clement, with best wishes for many happy birthdays, from E. S. Vanderbilt, March 12, 1900."
8:14 Tracy V. Wilson? Exum graduated on June 3, 1903, and Edith Vanderbilt encouraged her in what she wanted to do next, which was to study law. Exum started by enrolling at the Asheville Normal and Collegiate Institute, which was a women's school focused on teacher training and business skills. She earned a certificate from the Commercial Department in 1905 with coursework that included secretarial skills as well as academic subjects like US history and geography.
8:43 Holly Frey? Over the next few years, Clement spent her time simultaneously working to earn money and working toward becoming a lawyer. She spent about a year working as a stenographer for attorney Frederick W. Thomas, and she did the same work on two Democratic election campaigns. In 1906, she got a job as a clerk working for the Buncombe County Sheriff, and she continued in this job for at least the next eight years. She also started reading law at night, studying with attorneys James J. Britt and Robert Goldstein. There are still a few states where you can study with a lawyer rather than going to law school before taking the bar exam. But studying with an established lawyer was a lot more common in the early 20th century.
9:28 Tracy V. Wilson? Clement was also active in the women's suffrage movement. She was a member of the North Carolina Equal Suffrage Association, including serving as recording secretary and as part of the membership committee. She was also the recording secretary of the Asheville Equal Suffrage League and a member of its progress committee.
9:47 Holly Frey? In February of 1916, Clement passed the North Carolina bar exam on her first try, becoming only the fourth woman to pass the bar in North Carolina. The Asheville Citizen covered her accomplishment on February 11, running it under the headline, "Asheville Lady Is Now Lawyer: Ms. Exum Clement Passes State Bar Examination. Fourth in State." The newspaper described Clement as "one of Asheville's best-known young businesswomen", before quoting Goldstein as saying, "She has an unusually legal mind, being very capable, thorough, and systematic in all the courses, and has never missed a class, nor varied in her time of reporting for work
10:29 Holly Frey? one minute during the time she was a member of my class." Three men, who had also been in the class, passed the bar on the same day.
10:38 Tracy V. Wilson? Clement took her oath of office as an attorney before Judge W.F. Harding. Another judge, Thomas A. Jones, called her Brother Exum, and he presented her with a bouquet of carnations on behalf of all the women working in the county offices. She also received a bouquet of roses as a gift from the bar. Friends and family were there when she was taking her oath, as well as members of the Asheville Equal Suffrage League.
11:06 Holly Frey? Clement began advertising herself as "L. Exum Clement, Attorney at Law." At the time, she was the only woman in North Carolina who was working as an attorney without having any male partners, and this androgynous name may have helped her in that. Occasionally, though, it led to confusion when people who were new in town or hadn't heard of her came into her office and asked to speak to the lawyer, not realizing that that was exactly who they were talking to. Many of Clement's clients were women, and a lot of her focus was on criminal law and on the law as it applied to women and their needs.
11:44 Tracy V. Wilson? In July of 1916, western North Carolina and surrounding regions were struck by devastating flooding as two tropical depressions converged on the area, one right after the other, one of them traveling north from the Gulf of Mexico and the other northwest from the Atlantic coast through South Carolina. The French Broad and Swananoa rivers flooded, washing away mills and industrial buildings. Landslides destroyed roads and railroads, cutting Asheville off from the rest of the region, and the city of Asheville's power plant was destroyed. Other cities and towns in the Blue Ridge Mountains and the neighboring Piedmont were also devastated. Hundreds of homes and businesses were leveled and at least 80 people died.
12:28 Tracy V. Wilson? At the time, this was the worst natural disaster to strike western North Carolina in recorded history, surpassed only by Hurricane Helene in September of 2024.
12:38 Holly Frey? This must have had a direct impact on the Clement family. Biltmore Village is in a low-lying area and is prone to flooding, but this was severe, with water up to nine feet deep. The family had moved into Asheville proper at this point, into a house at 34 Hollywood Street that Exum's father had built, but they still would have had connections in Biltmore. Asheville faced extensive flooding as well, including downtown where Exum had her office. George Vanderbilt had died by this point, but Edith was a Red Cross volunteer and distributed things like food and blankets to flood victims.
13:16 Tracy V. Wilson? And the Clemens seemed like a family that would have been part of the recovery effort as well. They were active members of their community. Exum's siblings included a brother who was a Methodist pastor and sisters who worked in a tuberculosis hospital and with the Red Cross. Her father was also a city building inspector and was so well-known in Asheville that when he died in December of 1942, it was reported on the front page of the Asheville Citizen Times, which was otherwise almost entirely focused on World War II.
13:51 Tracy V. Wilson? But there were no mentions of the family or personal accounts from them about the flood in the research that was used for this episode, aside from a brief mention in that oral history given by Clement's daughter much later. And that just describes something being washed away in 1916. Yeah, I don't know what specifically was washed away. I haven't heard the audio of this oral history, but the transcription has a lot of stuff marked as inaudible or unintelligible. So something was washed away. We will get to Exum Clement's law career and her run for the North Carolina Legislature after a sponsor break.
14:34 Speaker 01 That sound? That's pro squash. Some of the fastest rallies in sport played inches from the crowd. The National Squash League is back in full swing for season four. The sport is heading to the 2028 Olympics for the first time, and you can see it up close right now in a city near you. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at NSL.Sport.
15:01 Speaker 04 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
15:04 Tracy V. Wilson? Hey, everybody. It's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.
15:25 Speaker 04 It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
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17:09 Holly Frey? We've all done it. Tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.
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18:17 Tracy V. Wilson? When Exum Clement passed the North Carolina bar exam, a lot of the world was involved in World War I, but the United States had not entered the war yet. That changed in April of 1917 when Congress voted to declare war on Germany. The Selective Service Act of 1917 was enacted in May, which required men between the ages of 21 and 30 to register for the draft. That age range was eventually extended up to the age of 45. After the passage of this law, Exum Clement served as chief clerk of the Buncombe County Draft Exemption Board.
18:54 Holly Frey? She also continued to be active in the suffrage movement at the local and state levels. In 1917, she was elected president of the Asheville Equal Suffrage League, and her sister Nancy was elected secretary. She continued in her role as recording secretary of the North Carolina League as well. In 1919, after the war was over, Clement also became a founding member of the Asheville Business and Professional Women's Association and was elected the first vice president.
19:24 Tracy V. Wilson? Also in 1919, Congress passed the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which simply read, quote, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." To go into effect, the amendment needed to be ratified by three-quarters of the states. By March of 1920, 35 states had ratified with only one more needed for the amendment to become part of the U.S. Constitution.
20:00 Holly Frey? With ratification seeming likely, women were selected to serve as some of the delegates from Buncombe County to the State Democratic Convention, and Clement was one of them. Male colleagues also started encouraging her to run for a seat in the North Carolina House of Representatives. She was initially reluctant to do this, but by April of 1920, she had filed her declaration of intention to run with the County Board of Elections. She later told a reporter from the Greensboro Daily News, quote, "Folks were right much surprised, for I am known to be a very conservative woman, but I wanted an opportunity to learn the people in my county better and to gain their confidence."
20:40 Tracy V. Wilson? But then in late May, newspapers across North Carolina carried a report that Clement had withdrawn from the race. A flurry of states had ratified the 19th Amendment in 1919, but progress had really slowed down in the face of coordinated anti-suffrage campaigns. Unnamed sources cited the fact that the amendment seemed likely to fail in Delaware and claimed that Clement didn't want to put the Democratic Party in the embarrassing position of running a candidate who could not be seated if she was elected.
21:15 Holly Frey? In June, Clement refuted this rumor to the Asheville Times, saying she, quote, "had no intention whatever of withdrawing from the race," but that she would not be a candidate if the 19th Amendment did not become effective. The North Carolina Constitution barred only two classes of people from holding office: atheists and convicts, and otherwise, every voter was eligible. The Raleigh News & Observer had already reported on this constitutional language, which suggested that if Clement could not be a voter, she could not hold office.
21:49 Tracy V. Wilson? Delaware did indeed not vote to ratify the 19th Amendment, so Clement was not yet a voter when the Democratic primary took place on June 5. She remained in the race, though. Her opponents were E.J. Jones and Elias C. Jones, which is not confusing at all. She won the primary, beating second-place E.J. Jones by 83 votes. Various news reports expressed surprise about this because people had assumed that voters in the more rural areas of Buncombe County didn't support women's suffrage and wouldn't like the idea of a woman in office.
22:27 Holly Frey? North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Walter Clark had written Clement a letter after hearing about her intent to run, saying, quote, "I am gratified to note that your friends are thinking of nominating you for the legislature from your county. I should be glad to see North Carolina take this forward step in recognition of the service women have rendered this state, though a tardy recognition, and hope that you will not decline to honor." After the primary, he wrote to her again, congratulating her on the nomination.
22:58 Tracy V. Wilson? Louisiana became the next state to vote against ratifying the 19th Amendment later in June of 1920. It was hoped that North Carolina would ratify the amendment when it came before the state legislature in August, but on August 17th, it failed by two votes. North Carolina would not ratify the 19th Amendment until 1971. But just a day after the measure failed in North Carolina on August 18th, 1920, it passed in Tennessee. Exum Clement could now become a voter, and nothing in the North Carolina constitution barred her from holding office.
23:35 Holly Frey? The election took place on November 2nd. The Buncombe County Republican Committee had resolved, quote, "in keeping with Republican policy favoring woman suffrage and out of deference to Ms. L. Exum Clement, the Democratic candidate for representative to offer no candidate in opposition to Ms. Clement." The committee also encouraged Republican voters to cast their votes in favor of Clement, even though she represented the other party. This required instructions on how to do it. The ballot had circles to mark for straight Democratic and straight Republican tickets, and Republican voters who marked that circle while also trying to cast a vote for Clement invalidated their ballots.
24:20 Holly Frey? While the Republicans didn't field a candidate, Charles Lee Sykes ran as an independent.
24:25 Tracy V. Wilson? Millions of women across the United States voted for the first time that day. Although, as we've noted many times on the show, in practice, the 19th Amendment applied primarily to white women, and there were women in other parts of the United States who did already have the right to vote before the 19th Amendment was ratified. The day after the election, the Asheville Citizen described the scene there this way, quote, "In some precincts in the morning hours, a line of men and women extended for nearly half a block, and threatening rain failed to stir any female from her place. We are almost prepared to venture the prediction that there were as many women voters as men."
25:08 Tracy V. Wilson? Nashville newspapers also reported on the tone of the day, which had historically involved a lot of alcohol and rough behavior, as being a lot more subdued, with male voters restraining themselves in deference to the ladies.
25:23 Holly Frey? When the votes were counted, Exum Clement had won 10,368 to 41, making her the first woman to serve in the North Carolina General Assembly, and the first woman in the South to be elected to a legislature.
25:38 Tracy V. Wilson? Clement started preparing to go to the Capitol in Raleigh for the legislative session, which would mean leaving her family and the man that she was courting, Elias Eller Stafford. As we said earlier, it was fairly unusual for a woman her age to still be unmarried, and we don't really know what her thoughts are on this. She was considered to be very attractive, though, and according to her daughter's oral history, there were rumors that the last duel to be fought in the Asheville area had involved two young men fighting over her, with one of them shooting off the other's hat.
26:14 Holly Frey? But she and Stafford clearly loved one another, and even the busyness of the campaign had been hard on them. Stafford worked for the Asheville Citizen, and that fall during her run for office, he wrote her a letter that began, "This way of not seeing you is getting on my nerves, and I don't like it one bit. Do you?" Another letter from around the same time signs off with, "Your Eller, who is endeavoring to merit your love." He also made various mentions in his letters of trying to get good coverage for the Democrats into the paper, something that would not be seen as journalistically ethical today, given his relationship with a Democratic candidate.
26:55 Tracy V. Wilson? Their letters back and forth continued after Exum went to Raleigh. Eller's letters tended to be very affectionate, while Exum's could be a bit more businesslike, more focused on what was happening in the General Assembly and what she hoped would make it into the newspaper. But her letters had their very tender moments as well. For example, a couple of weeks into her time in Raleigh, she asked Eller to put off his visit that they had planned. Quote, "Honey, I don't want you to come down next Sunday. Now, you may think I don't want to see you, but I never wanted to see anyone so much in my life. But the truth is, I am not very well, and I am going to do only the work I have to do and rest the remainder of the time.
27:40 Tracy V. Wilson? Some days, I stay in bed 12 hours. Don't tell Mama, she will worry." Later on in this letter, she said, quote, "You don't mind waiting on me another week, do you, darling? I want to see you so much, and there are so many things I want to tell you."
27:54 Holly Frey? Soon after this, after getting a series of long letters from Eller, Exum started one of hers with, quote, "Heart of mine, you are the sweetest thing in the world to write me such dear long letters. Do I miss you as much as you miss me? I don't dare think much about it, as I couldn't stay here. I miss you all the while and hope the time will pass quickly."
28:16 Tracy V. Wilson? While their letters made it clear that they missed one another terribly, the actual time they had to spend apart was fairly brief. Exum arrived in Raleigh for the start of the legislative session on January 3, and that session ended in early March. We will talk about it after another sponsor break.
29:08 Holly Frey? We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends. Not to cancel them, not to hype them
29:52 Holly Frey? more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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32:27 Tracy V. Wilson? Lillian Exum Clemente arrived in Raleigh, North Carolina at the start of January 1921, taking her seat in the North Carolina House of Representatives on January 5th. Her male colleagues referred to her as Brother Exum and Honorable Exum, as well as the lady from Buncombe. She was appointed to the Elections Committee, Committee on the Judiciary, Number One, the Committee on Propositions and Grievances, the Committee on Education, and the Committee on Salaries and Fees. And she was also Chair of the Committee for the Deaf. At least, I think she was the Chair of that committee. The House Journal says, "Mr. Clemente Chairman." But there were not any other Clementes serving in the House.
33:12 Holly Frey? This may have been confused by the Brother Exum nickname, which befuddles me a little bit.
33:17 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, I don't know.
33:18 Holly Frey? There was a lot of news coverage of her and her arrival at the Capitol and the start of her term. On January 6th, the day after the start of the session, the Raleigh News & Observer quoted her as saying, quote, "I was afraid at first that the men would oppose me because I am a woman, but I don't feel that way now. I feel rather shy and timid among all these men, but I have always worked with men, and I know them as they are. I have no false illusions or fears of them. I am by nature a very timid woman and very conservative, too, but I am firm in my convictions. I want to blaze a trail for other women. I know that years from now, there will be many other women in the legislature, but you have to start a thing, you know?"
34:03 Tracy V. Wilson? Clemente reiterated this idea in a letter to Eller Stafford on January 11th, quote, "I don't want people to expect too much of me. There is little I can do alone. If I blaze the trail for other women to come in until there is enough to do something, then I feel I have done my duty."
34:20 Holly Frey? A few days after that, the Greensboro Daily News described how Clemente had made a place for herself within the legislature. Quote, "Miss L. Exum Clemente, the only woman representative in the General Assembly, has slipped so unobtrusively and quietly into the everyday work of the House of Representatives that she is becoming quite a familiar presence there, and one has ceased to regard it as anything at all out of the ordinary." Inquiring rather timidly at the door of the hall as to whether Ms. Clement was at her desk, the reply came back quick as a flash, "Oh, I'm sure she is, for she's always among the first to get here in the morning." It was then 9:30 on the day of the inauguration ceremonies. Ms. Clement has been assigned
35:03 Holly Frey? to Desk 59, just under the picture of George Washington, which hangs on the wall to the right of the Speaker's Desk. When asked if she had gotten accustomed to being the object of so much general attention as the only woman representative, Ms. Clement said that for the first day or two it was a bit embarrassing, but that now she is feeling quite at home, and that it's a little different from the work of the courtroom.
35:26 Tracy V. Wilson? This article also went on to describe the responsibility Clement felt to the women of the state and the impression that she would make on their behalf. Quote, "She doesn't want to do anything spectacular, or disturbing, or out of the ordinary, but she does want to be accepted there as a matter of fact, because her constituency wanted her there, and because it is her right." This reporter also described her as feeling very homesick, missing her seven-year-old niece, her parents, and her flower garden.
35:57 Holly Frey? At a few points during her time in office, Clement was asked to preside over a roll call vote, including on a road bill that was particularly important to western North Carolina. She also introduced multiple bills, occasionally with a cosponsor, but usually on her own. Most of them ultimately became law, either in this legislative session or after being reintroduced with similar language later on.
36:22 Tracy V. Wilson? Some of these bills were really controversial. One was "An Act to Assume Control of and Conduct the Lindley Home Near Asheville, North Carolina as an Industrial and Training School for Wayward Girls and Women."
36:37 Tracy V. Wilson? The Lindley Home was being run by Mrs. M. E. Hillard as a private charitable institution, and it had a $5,000 legacy that covered most of its operating expenses. But Hillard was advancing in age, and Clement wanted to make sure the institution could continue once Hillard could no longer run it. A lot of the women and girls who were living there really had no other place to go. She faced heavy criticism from people who thought she was encouraging vice by supporting this home, including having vegetables and eggs thrown at her while she was speaking in support of it. In a news report on this, she was quoted as saying, quote, "I am reminded of a time
37:19 Tracy V. Wilson? long ago when people were passing judgment on a woman, when weapons were not eggs but hard stones. It is not for you or I to condemn or cast the first stone, but rather to render aid to the unfortunate, so they may go their way and sin no more." Another controversial bill was an act to amend the consolidated statutes of North Carolina relating to divorce. Before this law was passed, a person who had been abandoned by their spouse could get a divorce in North Carolina after 10 years. Clement's act cut that down to five. She thought the 10-year requirement was excessive and that it presented a particular hardship
38:00 Tracy V. Wilson? to women, and that, in her words, quote, "Not one person in 10,000 returns to husband or wife after a separation of five years." At the same time, legislators didn't want North Carolina to become a place for, quote, "frivolous seekers of matrimony's dissolution," and some thought reducing the 10-year requirement would do exactly that. Even though five years was still a really long time. I know, I'm thinking about our divorce ranches episode where it's like, six weeks! I thought about it, too.
38:33 Holly Frey? Clement's focus was also largely on women in an act to provide privacy in voting. At the time, ballots were not secrets and other people could see who you were voting for and try to change your mind or harass you about it at the polls. Clement thought men were hardened to the various forms of intimidation and coercion that could happen at polling places, but that women were not, especially since women had only just gotten the right to vote in North Carolina. She wanted everyone to be able to vote according to their conscience in private. Clement's bill did not make it past the Committee on Election Laws, but North Carolina eventually did implement secret ballots in 1929.
39:18 Holly Frey? A lot of the legislation Clement introduced was about safety. One bill was "an act to promote the safety of employees and passengers by prohibiting railroad companies from employing firemen, brakemen, flagmen, train baggagemen, passenger train porters, or other employees assisting in the movement of trains and cars in road or yard service who cannot read and write the rules of such companies." Along with the other representative from Buncombe County, Luke Young, she also introduced "an act to promote sanitation in milk production in Buncombe County," which required dairy cattle to be tested for tuberculosis before their milk could be sold.
40:01 Holly Frey? She saw this as particularly important because Buncombe County was home to so many sanatoriums. Other legislation that she introduced addressed trespassing on municipal watersheds, cooperation among the state and counties in forest fire protection, the construction of a fireproof addition at the Buncombe County courthouse, maintenance of bridges across the French Broad River, and an act to protect public libraries in Buncombe County.
40:28 Tracy V. Wilson? Various sources that I used for this episode say that Clement introduced bills that I just wasn't able to confirm. These sources were newspaper and magazine articles, not academic journal articles that have citations and footnotes. So it was not really possible to figure out exactly where this information came from or whether it was correct. One was supposedly a bill to add yellow caution lights to traffic signals in addition to red and green. I just couldn't find this in documents from the 1921 legislative session and newspaper reports from that year suggest that the traffic signals were really not standardized in North Carolina, like some of them were using semaphore flags rather than colored lights.
41:13 Tracy V. Wilson? Another bill that she purportedly introduced was a eugenics bill, specifically legislation allowing the state to forcibly sterilize people who were deemed unfit. This is actually part of North Carolina's first eugenics law, which was "an act to benefit the moral, mental, and physical conditions of inmates in penal and charitable institutions." This law empowered "competent and skillful surgeons to perform any operation that would be for the mental, moral, or physical condition of such inmate." But that law was passed in 1919, before Clement was elected to office, and North Carolina
41:55 Tracy V. Wilson? law did not specifically mention sterilization until a decade later. My various sources through the records of the legislative sessions that she was part of just did not seem to have this in it. At the same time, though, the eugenics movement had extremely broad acceptance in the United States at this point, so it's at least believable that Clement supported the movement.
42:19 Holly Frey? The North Carolina House ended its 1921 legislative session on March 9th. A week later, on March 16th, Lillian Exum Clement married Elias Eller Stafford at the Church of St. John in the Wilderness in Flat Rock, southeast of Hendersonville. According to Exum's daughter, they chose to get married at this church both because it was a beautiful location and because it was far enough from Asheville to feel like an adventure. They sent a telegram to inform Eller's parents of their marriage, and they got one in return from his father, which read, quote, "We send congratulations." Letter follows. Father.
42:56 Tracy V. Wilson? Uh, telegrams were by nature very concise, but that delighted me. Exum's marriage led to a question among legislators, which was what they were supposed to call her if the legislature returned for an extra session before the next election. She had been elected with the last name of Clement, but now her last name was Stafford, and that kind of name change was not something the legislature had ever considered or planned for. Although news reports said that it had been decided that she would still be known as Clement, the role for the extra session that did convene that December lists her as Mrs. Exum Clement Stafford.
43:35 Holly Frey? Back in Asheville, Exum Clement Stafford kept up her law practice, and there was at least some discussion of her running for Congress. Governor Cameron Morrison also appointed her to the Board of Directors of the State Hospital in Morganton for a six-year term. It's possible that this is where her support of eugenics could be documented. This was initially founded as the Western Carolina Insane Asylum. Following the advocacy of Dorothea Dix, it is now known as Broughton Hospital.
44:06 Tracy V. Wilson? She was also a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, including serving as the registrar of the Asheville chapter from 1922 to 1923.
44:16 Tracy V. Wilson? The United Daughters of the Confederacy was founded in 1894, and some of its initial work included things like maintaining the grave sites of Confederate soldiers, raising money for the care and housing of Confederate veterans and their families, and planning Memorial Day observances. But the organization was also very heavily involved with promoting the myth of the lost cause of the Confederacy. That's the distorted and romanticized interpretation of the South's involvement in the Civil War as a doomed attempt to defend a noble cause, rather than what it was explicitly about, which was maintaining the institution of slavery. We talked about this in our December 14th, 2020, episode on the lost cause,
45:01 Tracy V. Wilson? which we also ran as our most recent Saturday classic.
45:05 Holly Frey? On May 25th, 1923, Exum Clement Stafford gave birth to a daughter named Nancy, after her sister, who was later known as Stafford. She was born premature, and in an oral history given in 2002, she described herself as Asheville's first incubator baby.
45:24 Tracy V. Wilson? Exum became ill after her daughter was born and she needed a wet nurse. She hired a young woman named Rebecca, who she'd taken an interest in after finding her sitting on a bench outside of her law office for several days in a row. Rebecca had become pregnant by her employer's son, and both her employer and her family had kicked her out, so Exum had taken her in.
45:47 Holly Frey? Exum kept a diary for her daughter, documenting their lives through very tender and loving entries. They can also be sort of heartbreaking. The last one reads, quote, "Last night, you slept with someone besides daddy and mother for the first time. Daddy was sick and mother was sick, and Aunt Nancy came in and spent the night with you." Less than two weeks later, on February 21st, 1925, Lilium Exum Clement Stafford died of pneumonia. She was survived by her husband, her daughter, both her parents, and seven siblings.
46:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Both houses of the North Carolina Legislature adjourned in her memory, and they passed a joint resolution honoring her. News of her death appeared under the headline, quote, "Asheville loses one of its most notable women." One of her obituaries read in part, quote, "A daughter of the present age, she held to the best of the old days while adopting the best of the new." There's also a fair amount of misinformation and various obituaries, including that she had never been a suffragist and that she had been elected before women had the right to vote in North Carolina.
46:56 Holly Frey? In the words of an address read by Mrs. A. Matthews at a memorial service held by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, quote, "The outstanding characteristics of Mrs. Stafford's life were steadfastness of purpose, sincerity, loyalty, and modesty. Once she began an undertaking, she never faltered until it was finished. She was entirely sincere in all she said and did. Her loyalty to her principles and aims and to her friends was unbounded. She gave freely of herself and what she had to others. But the crown of her womanhood was her modesty. Absolutely unspoiled by the honors she had won, she demeaned herself at all times, in dress, manner, word, and deed, with all becomingness."
47:41 Tracy V. Wilson? A historical marker was placed near the site of her law office in Asheville at the corner of Charlotte and College Streets in 1999. It reads, quote, "Lillian Exum Clement Stafford, 1894 to 1925. First female legislator in the South. Elected to NC House, 1920. Her law office was 400 yards west, home half-mile northeast. Her daughter, Stafford Anders, was present at the unveiling. In 2014, it was also announced that the family home on Hollywood Street would be preserved through a conservation easement."
48:19 Holly Frey? The Bible she was given by Ethel Vanderbilt was rediscovered among family belongings in the 20 teens. Wingate Anders, the widower of Stafford Anders, said that he hoped it could be restored so that other women could use it at their swearing in.
48:34 Tracy V. Wilson? In 2011, Lillian's List was established in North Carolina and named for her, dedicated to developing progressive women candidates for office.
48:45 Tracy V. Wilson? I'm glad there was a one paragraph mention,
48:52 Tracy V. Wilson? description of her in this behind the scenes episode of a different podcast.
48:56 Holly Frey? Yeah.
48:57 Tracy V. Wilson? I really enjoyed researching this and even though there were challenges that we can talk about in the behind the scenes.
49:02 Holly Frey? Do you have listener mail in the meantime?
49:05 Tracy V. Wilson? I do. I have listener mail. We referenced this listener mail in a Saturday classic already, but I wanted to read the actual email. It is from Kiki. It is titled Great Episodic Mistake. Kiki wrote, I am a high school history teacher who loves listening to your podcast on my drive to work. I've used your podcast in my classes, both to inspire my lectures and for students to listen to. While listening to your recent podcast on The Great Episodic, I noticed a mistake. You said that the Sherman Silver Purchase Act might have contributed to the panic of 1873. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act was passed in 1890, and it might have contributed to the panic of 1893, not 1873. And yes, President Cleveland repealed it. I thought you might have been thinking of the Bland Allison Act, which also involves
49:49 Tracy V. Wilson? silver, but that was passed in 1878, so it did not contribute to the panic of 1873 either. As an AP teacher, I really emphasize knowing dates. And yes, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act is one that stuck in my head. Thank you for your great shows. As pet tax, here is my Westie Fiona, who is one and a half years old. She is full of energy, but as I have to explain to my classes, she is not named after the character in Shrek, but the character in Brigadoon.
50:21 Tracy V. Wilson? It was played by centuries. Thanks for your entertaining podcast, Kiki. Thank you so much, Kiki, for this email. The only thing I can imagine happened here, which doesn't really make sense to me that it could have happened, is that just somewhere either. I typo'd the year of the panic of 1873, or something bad was in the search results that I just didn't clock as being about a different financial panic. This was an era of US history that was full of just cycles of boom and bust. And so there were just ongoing periods of prosperity, followed by periods of financial
51:03 Tracy V. Wilson? panic, because nothing was being regulated, banking system not regulated, the just not a great, not a very stable time of economic history. I also feel like this is probably the inevitable result of watching continual intentional chaos play out in the world around us and trying to just work through it. So I am sorry that I wrote just a big mess of a paragraph there. I messed that all up somehow. It does not make any sense, reading back on it. Thank you so much, Kiki, for writing us this gracious note to point that out.
51:44 Tracy V. Wilson? Thank you also for just the cutest puppy dog picture. A little Westie with the little plaid collar on a, on a bed with striped linens on it. So cute, making the cute little Westie face.
52:02 Holly Frey? Westies are very cute dogs.
52:04 Tracy V. Wilson? They're incredibly cute. So if you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcasts, we're at [email protected] . You can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere else that you like to get your podcasts. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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