Marion Scudder Griffin Gravesite in Elmwood Cemetery
Marion Scudder Griffin of Memphis and Bolivar — An ardent advocate of women's rights and suffrage, she served in 1899 as a law clerk in the Memphis office of Judge Thomas M. Scruggs. She was certified by two sitting judges to practice law on February 15, 1900, but she was barred from the legal profession on the basis of her sex. After a lengthy campaign for a state law enabling women to practice law, a bill was passed on February 13, 1907, and M. Griffin was licensed and enrolled as a member of the Memphis bar on July 1, 1907, thus becoming the first woman licensed as an attorney in Tennessee. She ran for the state House of Representatives and was elected in 1922 to the 63rd Assembly, where she headed the Social Welfare Committee and sponsored legislation benefitting the lives of women and children.