Washington: U.s. Supreme Court

She was, after all, the first woman on the Washington Supreme Court. And now she is the subject of an oral history.

(Boy! Former reporter John Hughes is really cranking out stories! Slow down, John. You're a historian now, not a reporter on a daily deadline.)

Legacy Project honors first woman Supreme Court justice

OLYMPIA – Before Sandra Day O’Connor was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court 28 years ago, Carolyn Dimmick was already getting used to breaking the glass ceiling in the judiciary in this Washington.

As the state and nation commemorate Women’s History Month, Dimmick, the first woman justice on the state Supreme Court, is being honored with a new oral history and profile.

It has been over 50 years since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down racist laws that consigned African American children to attending separate, but supposedly equal, schools.

The court's ruling held, essentially, that the underlying notion of "separate but equal" school facilities was itself unconstitutional.

Today no one questions that decision, and no one would (at least not publically) suggest that we ought to go back to the segregated world of the 1940s and before.

Yet, many of the same people who understand that it is wrong to give children different educational experiences because of the color of their skin, still hold that it is acceptable to give couples in committed, loving relationships different legal rights on the basis of the shape of their genitalia.