Exum Clement, Attorney at Law

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. 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 Lillian exhem Clement Stafford, who went
by ExHAM or x, and she was the first woman

(00:34):
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, and this
kind of asked 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 Ashville, specifically one of my favorite places.

(00:57):
So here we are exem Clemens staff Efford's story starts
to the question that we have been running into a
lot on recent episodes, which is exactly was she born.
Sources agree on March twelfth, but not on the year.
We usually have the opposite where they know the year,
but the date is fuzzy. Little variety According to the

(01:19):
nineteen hundred census, exem Clement was born in eighteen eighty six,
making her fourteen when that census was taken. Then, the
nineteen twenty census lists ages but not years, and that
one reported Lillian E. Clement as a twenty two year
old stenographer. Apart from the fact that in nineteen twenty

(01:40):
she was a lawyer, those ages don't quite line up
later in her life, though the gap gets a lot bigger.
Her nineteen twenty one marriage license listed her ages twenty seven.
That would mean she had been born in eighteen ninety four,
eight years later than the year that's listed on the
nineteen hundred census, and this isn't even all of the

(02:01):
discrepancies involved in her birth record. Her death certificate says
that she was born in eighteen ninety two, and her
gravestone gives a whole other year, which is eighteen eighty eight.
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

(02:24):
she got married. Her husband was only twenty six when
they got married, and it was already pretty unusual for
a thirty five 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

(02:47):
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 she reached various
milestones and achievements in her life. But if she really
was born in the eighteen eighties and not the eighteen nineties,
she would have been a lot older, or at least

(03:08):
a bit older than those startlingly young ages.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Exem's father was George Washington Clement, who was a carpenter
and a cabinet maker. 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 one hundred
enslaved people. The Civil War ended when George was about thirteen,
and over the course of the war the plantation was

(03:34):
destroyed and his mother and one of his siblings died
of typhoid. Eventually in eighteen eighty seven, he moved to
western North Carolina, where he met a widow named Sarah
Elizabeth Burnett, and they got married in eighteen seventy nine.
George and Sarah had eight children together, and a lot
of sources say that Exam was the sixth, but that

(03:56):
seems to be based on a later birth year. If
she was really born in eighteen eighty six, 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 under water. It was flooded
in the creation of the North Fork Reservoir, which today

(04:19):
provides most of Ashville's water supply. In eighteen ninety nine,
the family moved to Biltmore, which is now part of Ashville.
The House at Biltmore Estate, which is the truly gigantic
home of George Washington Vanderbilt, had been completed in eighteen
ninety five, and afterward Vanderbilt had embarked on the creation
of a model town patterned after a quaint European village.

(04:43):
This included the Episcopal Cathedral of All Souls, finished in
eighteen ninety six and Biltmore Parish Day School finished in
eighteen ninety eight. 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 Builtmore estate. After the family moved to Biltmore, ExHAM,

(05:06):
who was about thirteen, continued her education at the day school,
which had a lot more resources than that one.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
Room school in North Fork.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
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. 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

(05:37):
employees and the staff at the estate, which included an
interest in ExHAM and her siblings. In nineteen hundred, when
ExHAM was confirmed at the Cathedral of All Souls, she
received a Bible as a gift which was inscribed for
Exhem Clement with best wishes for many happy birthdays from E. S. Vanderbilt.
March twelfth, nineteen hundred, graduated on June third, nineteen oh three,

(06:03):
and Edith Vanderbilt encouraged her in what she wanted to
do next, which was to study law. Exem started by
enrolling at the Ashville 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 nineteen
oh five, with coursework that included secretarial skills as well

(06:25):
as academic subjects like US history and geography. 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.

(06:46):
In nineteen oh six, she got a job as a
clerk working for the Bunkham 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,

(07:08):
but studying with an established lawyer was a lot more
common in the early twentieth century. 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

(07:30):
and a member of its Progress Committee. In February of
nineteen sixteen, 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 eleventh, running it under the headline Asheville

(07:50):
lady is now lawyer, miss exem Clement passes state bar
examination fourth in state. The newspaper described Clement as one
of Asheville's best known young business women, before quoting Goldstein
as saying, quote, she has an unusually legal mind, being
very capable, thorough and systematic in all the courses, and

(08:11):
has never missed a class nor varied in her time
of reporting for work 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, Clement took her oath of office as an
attorney before Judge W. F.

Speaker 3 (08:28):
Harding.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Another judge, Thomas A. Jones, called her brother ExHAM, 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.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
From the bar.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
Friends and family were there when she was taking her oath,
as well as members of the Asheville Equal Suffrage League.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Clement began advertising herself as l Exhem 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

(09:13):
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. In July
of nineteen sixteen, Western North Carolina and surrounding regions were

(09:34):
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 in industrial buildings.

(09:54):
Landslides destroyed roads and railroads, cutting Ashville off from the
rest of the region, and the city of Ashville'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 eighty
people died. At the time, this was the worst natural

(10:16):
disaster to strike Western North Carolina in recorded history, surpassed
only by Hurricane Helene in September of twenty twenty four.
This must have had a direct impact on the Clement
family Builtmore 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

(10:39):
Ashville proper at this point into a house at thirty
four Hollywood Street that Exham's father had built, but they
still would have had connections in Biltmore. Ashville faced extensive
flooding as well, including downtown where ExHAM had her office.
George Vanderbilt had died by this point, but Edith was
a Red Cross volunteer and distributed things like food and

(11:00):
blankets to flood victims, and the Clements seemed like a
family that would have been part of the recovery effort
as well. They were active members of their community. Exim'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

(11:22):
and was so well known in Asheville that when he
died in December of nineteen forty two, it was reported
on the front page of the Asheville Citizen Times, which
was otherwise almost entirely focused on World War Two. But
there were no mentions of the family or personal accounts
from them about the flood in the research that was

(11:43):
used for this episode, aside from a brief mention in
that oral history given by Clement's daughter much later, and
that just described something being washed away in nineteen sixteen. Yeah,
I don't know what specifically was washed away. I haven't
heard the audio of this oral history, but the the
transcription has a lot of stuff marked as in audible
or unintelligible, so something was washed away. We will get

(12:07):
to exem Clement's law career and her run for the
North Carolina Legislature after a sponsor break when exem Clement
passed to the North Carolina bar exam A lot.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Of the world was involved in World War One, but
the United States had not entered the war yet. That
changed in April of nineteen seventeen when Congress voted to
declare war on Germany. The Selective Service Act of nineteen
seventeen was enacted in May, which required men between the
ages of twenty one and thirty to register for the draft.

(12:47):
That age range was eventually extended up to the age
of forty five. After the passage of this law, exem
Clement served as chief clerk of the Buncome County Draft
Exemption Board.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
She also continued to be active in the suffrage movement
at the local and state levels. In nineteen seventeen, 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 nineteen nineteen, after the war was over, Clement also

(13:22):
became a founding member of the Asheville Business and Professional
Women's Association and was elected the first vice president.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
Also in nineteen nineteen, Congress passed the Nineteenth 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 a fact,

(13:52):
the amendment needed to be ratified by three quarters of
the states. By March of nineteen twenty thirty five states
had ratified, with only one more needed for the amendment
to become part of the US Constitution. With ratification seeming likely,
women were selected to service some of the delegates from
Bunkhom County to the State Democratic Convention, and Clement was

(14:14):
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 nineteen twenty, 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

(14:35):
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. 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 nineteenth Amendment in

(14:57):
nineteen nineteen, but progress had really slow 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

(15:17):
could not be seated if she was elected. 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
nineteenth Amendment did not become effective. The North Carolina constitution
barred only two classes of people from holding office, atheists

(15:40):
and convicts, and otherwise every voter was eligible. The Raleigh
News and Observer had already reported on this constitutional language,
which suggested that if Clement could not be a voter,
she could not hold office. Delaware did indeed not vote
to ratify the nineteenth Amendment. Clement was not yet a

(16:01):
voter when the Democratic primary took place on June fifth.
She remained in the race, though her opponents were EJ.
Jones and Elias C. Jones, which is not confusing at all.
She won the primary, beating second place EJ. Jones by
eighty three votes. Various news reports expressed surprise about this

(16:23):
because people had assumed that voters in the more rural
areas of Buncom County didn't support women's suffrage and wouldn't
like the idea of a woman in office. 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

(16:43):
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. Louisiana became the next state

(17:06):
to vote against ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment later in June
of nineteen twenty. It was hoped that North Carolina would
ratify the amendment when it came before the state legislature
in August, but on August seventeenth, it failed by two votes.
North Carolina would not ratify the nineteenth Amendment until nineteen
seventy one, but just the day after the measure failed

(17:29):
in North Carolina, on August eighteenth, nineteen twenty, it passed
in Tennessee. Exem Clement could now become a voter, and
nothing in the North Carolina constitution barred her from holding office.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
The election took place on November two. The Buncom County
Republican Committee had resolved quote in keeping with Republican policy
favoring woman's suffrage and out of deference to Miss l
Exhem Clement, the Democratic candidate for representative, to offer no
candidate in opposition to Miss Clement. The committee also encouraged

(18:02):
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, while the Republicans

(18:26):
didn't feeld a candidate. Charles Lee Sykes ran as an independent.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
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 nineteenth 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 nineteenth Amendment was ratified. The day

(18:52):
after the election, the Asheville Citizen described the scene there
this way. Quote In some precincts in the morning hours,
a line of men in 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.

(19:13):
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.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
When the votes were counted, exem Clement had won ten
three hundred sixty eight to forty one, 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.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
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 L. R.

Speaker 3 (19:53):
Stafford.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
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

(20:16):
off the other's hat, 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 quote, this way of not
seeing you is getting on my nerves and I don't

(20:37):
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

(20:58):
Democratic candidate. Their letters back and forth continued after ExHAM
went to Raleigh. Eller's letters tended to be very affectionate,
while Exem's could be a bit more business like, 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,

(21:22):
a couple of weeks into her time in Raleigh, she
asked Ella 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

(21:43):
to do and rest the remainder of the time. Some
days I stay in bed twelve 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. Soon after this,
after getting a series of long letters from Eller, Exam

(22:04):
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. While their
letters made it clear that they missed one another terribly,

(22:25):
the actual time they had to spend.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
Apart was fairly brief.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
Exam arrived in Raleigh for the start of the legislative
session on January third, and that session ended in early March.
We will talk about it after another sponsor break. Lillian
Exhem Clement arrived in Raleigh, North Carolina, at the start

(22:52):
of January nineteen twenty one, taking her seat in the
North Carolina House of Representatives on January fifth. Her male
colleagues referred to her as Brother ExHAM and Honorable Exum,
as well as the lady from Buncom. She was appointed
to the Elections Committee, Committee on the Judiciary Number one,
the Committee on Propositions and Grievances, the Committee on Education,

(23:16):
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 mister Clement chairman, but there were not
any other Clements serving in the House.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
This may have been confused by the Brother Exam nickname,
which befuddles me a little bit.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
There was a lot of news coverage of her and
her arrival at the Capitol and the start of her term.
On January sixth, the day after the start of the session,
the Raleigh News and 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 all

(24:00):
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

(24:22):
have to start a thing, you know.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
Clement reiterated this idea in a letter to Eller Stafford
on January eleventh, 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. A few days after that,
the Greensboro Daily News described how Clement had made a

(24:46):
place for herself within the legislature. Quote, Miss l Exhem Clement,
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 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

(25:08):
timidly at the door of the hall as to whether
Miss 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 nine point thirty on the day of
the inauguration ceremonies. Miss Clement has been assigned to Desk
fifty nine, just under the picture of George Washington, which

(25:28):
hangs on the wall to the right of.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
The Speaker's desk.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
When asked if she had gotten accustomed to being the
object of so much general attention as the only woman representative,
Miss 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.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
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 just disturbing or out
of the ordinary, but she does want to be accepted
there as a matter of fact, because her constituency wanted

(26:08):
her there and because it is her right.

Speaker 3 (26:10):
This reporter also described her.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
As feeling very homesick, missing her seven year old niece,
her parents, and her flower garden. 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 co sponsor, but usually

(26:33):
on her own. Most of them ultimately became law, either
in this legislative session or after being reintroduced with similar
language later on. 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

(26:54):
and training school for wayward girls and women. The Lindley
Home was being run by missus M. E. Hillard as
a private charitable institution, and it had a five thousand
dollars 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

(27:17):
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

(27:37):
quoted as saying, quote, I am reminded of a time
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 unfortunates
so they may go their way and sin no more.

(27:57):
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 ten years.
Clement's Act cut that down to five. She thought the
ten year requirement was excessive and that it presented a

(28:20):
particular hardship to women, and that, in her words, quote,
not one person in ten thousand 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 matrimonious dissolution, and some thought reducing the

(28:41):
ten year requirement would do exactly that, even though five
years was still a really long time.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
You know, I'm thinking about our Divorce Ranches episode where
it's like six weeks.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
I thought about it too.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
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

(29:16):
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 to the Committee on Election Laws,
but North Carolina eventually did implement secret ballots in nineteen

(29:39):
twenty nine.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
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 employeeing firemen, brakemen, flagmen,
train baggagemen, passenger train porters, or other employees assisting in
the mood of trains and cars in road or yard

(30:02):
service who cannot read and write the rules of such companies.
Along with the other representative from Bunkhom County, Luke Young,
she also introduced an Act to promote sanitation in milk
production in Bunkham County, which required dairy cattle to be
tested for tuberculosis before their milk could be sold. She
saw this as particularly important because Bunkham County was home

(30:26):
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 Bunkhom County Courthouse, maintenance of bridges across the
French Broad River, and an act to protect public libraries

(30:47):
in Bunkham County. 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

(31:07):
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 nineteen twenty one
legislative session, and newspaper reports from that year suggest that
the traffic signals were really not standardized in North Carolina,

(31:30):
like some of them were using semaphore flags rather than
colored lights. 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

(31:51):
benefit the moral, mental, and physical conditions of inmates and
penal and charitable institutions.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
This law and power quote competent and skillful surgeons to
perform any operation that would be for the quote mental, moral,
or physical condition of such inmate. But that law was
passed in nineteen nineteen, before Clement was elected to office
and North Carolina law did not specifically mention sterilization until

(32:19):
a decade later. My various sources through the records of
the legislative sessions that she was part of just that
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.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
The North Carolina House ended its nineteen twenty one legislative
session on March ninth. A week later, on March sixteenth,
Lillian ExHAM Clement married Elias l. Er Stafford at the
Church of Saint John in the Wilderness in Flat Rock,
southeast of Hendersonville. According to Exham's daughter, they chose to
get married at this church both because it was a

(33:01):
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. Telegrams were by nature very concise,

(33:21):
but that delighted me. Exham'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

(33:45):
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 Missus Exhem
Clement Stafford. Back in Ashville, Exhem Clement Stafford kept up
law practice, and there was at least some discussion of
her running for Congress. Governor Cameron Morrison also appointed her

(34:07):
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.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
She was also a member of the United Daughters of
the Confederacy, in serving as the registrar of the Asheville
chapter from nineteen twenty two to nineteen twenty three. The
United Daughters of the Confederacy was founded in eighteen ninety four,
and some of its initial work included things like maintaining
the grave sites of Confederate soldiers, raising money for the

(34:49):
care and housing of Confederate veterans and their families, and
planning Memorial Day observances. But the organization was also very
heavily involved with promoting them 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

(35:10):
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 fourteenth, twenty twenty
episode on the Lost Cause, which we also ran as
our most recent Saturday Classic.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
On May twenty fifth, nineteen twenty three, exem 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 two thousand and two,
she described herself as Ashville's first incubator. Baby Exem became
ill after her daughter was born, and she needed a

(35:48):
wet nurse. She hired a young woman named Rebecca, who
she had taken an interest in after finding her sitting
on a bench outside of her law office for several
days in a row. Rebecca had had become pregnant by
her employer's son, and both her employer and her family
had kicked her out, so Exem had taken her in.
Exem kept a diary for her daughter, documenting their lives

(36:11):
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 twenty first, nineteen
twenty five, Lilliam Exhem Clement Stafford died of pneumonia. She

(36:36):
was survived by her husband, her daughter, both her parents,
and seven siblings.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
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 Ashville 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

(37:03):
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.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
In the words of an address read by Missus A.
Matthews at a memorial service held by the United Daughters
of the Confederacy, quote, the outstanding characteristics of missus Stafford's
life were steadfastness of purpose, sincerity, loyalty, and modesty. Once
she began an undertaking, she never faltered until it was finished.

(37:38):
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,

(37:59):
and deed, with all becoming this.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
A historical marker was placed near the site of her
law office in Ashville at the corner of Charlotte and
College Streets in nineteen ninety nine. It reads, quote Lillian
exem Clement Stafford eighteen ninety four to nineteen twenty five,
first female legislator in the South elected to Msieahouse nineteen twenty.

(38:24):
Her law office was four hundred yards west home half
mile northeast. Her daughter, Stafford Anders, was present at the unveiling.
In twenty fourteen, it was also announced that the family
home on Hollywood Street would be preserved through a conservation easement.
The Bible she was given by Ethel Vanderbilt was rediscovered
among family belongings in the twenty teens. Wingate Anders, the

(38:48):
widower of Stafford Anders, said that he hoped it could
be restored so that other women could use it at
their swearing in. In twenty eleven, Lillian's List was established
in North Carolina and named for her, dedicated to developing
progressive women candidates for office. I'm glad there was a

(39:08):
one paragraph mention a description of her in this behind
the scenes episode of a different podcast.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
I really enjoyed researching this and even though there were
challenges that we can talk about in the behind the scenes.
Do you have listener mail? In the meantime, 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
Epizootic Mistake. Kiki wrote, I am a high school history

(39:38):
teacher who loves listening to your podcast on my drive
to work. I've used your podcast and my classes both
to inspire my lectures and for students to listen to.
While listening to your recent podcast on the Great Epizootic,
I noticed a mistake. You said that the Sherman Silver
Purchase Act might have contributed to the Panic of eighteen
seventy three. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act was passed in

(39:59):
eighteen ninety and it might have contributed to the Panic
of eighteen ninety three, not eighteen seventy three, and yes,
President Cleveland repealed it.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
I thought you might have.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
Been thinking of the Bland Alison Act, which also involves silver,
but that was pasted in eighteen seventy eight, so it
did not contribute to the Panic of eighteen seventy three either.
As an ap teacher, I really emphasized 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 Westy Fiona, who is one and a

(40:28):
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 who was played by centuries. Thanks for your entertaining podcast, Kiki.
Thank you so much Kiki for this email. I The

(40:50):
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 typoed the year of the
Panic of eighteen seventy three, 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

(41:14):
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 panic because nothing was
being regulated, banking system not regulated, just not a great,
not a very stable time of economic history.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
I also feel like this is.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
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 make any sense reading back on it.

(42:02):
Thank you so much Kiky for writing us this gracious
note to point that out. Thank you also for just
the cutest puppy dog picture, a little Westy with the
little plaid collar on a bed with striped lenens on it,
so cute, making the cute little Westy face. Westy's are

(42:24):
very cute dogs. They're incredibly cute. So if you would
like to send us a note about this or any
other podcast or at history Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com,
you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app
or anywhere else that you'd like to get your podcasts.

(42:46):
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