In 1929, when 21-year-old Susie Marshall Sharp went to her hometown courthouse in Reidsville to take the oath for admission to the bar, the presiding judge remarked in open court,

"Well, young lady, I congratulate you, but I'd be derelict in my duty if I didn't tell you that you will never amount to anything as a lawyer. If you persist, you will just be wasting your time, playing in the sand. I advise you to start right now trying to find something more appropriate to do."

For the next 50 years, Susie Sharp did persist in "playing in the sand," but no one would agree that North Carolina's first woman city attorney, first woman Judge of Superior Court, first woman Associate Justice of the State Supreme Court, and first woman in the U.S. to be elected Chief Justice of a State Supreme Court "wasted her time."

On Tuesday, Sept. 23, at 5 p.m., Anna R. Hayes will present her book, "Without Precedent," the first biography of North Carolina's legendary legal icon.

"Justice Sharp transcended the limits society placed on women in her time," Hayes says. "She hurdled every barrier to reach the pinnacle of the legal profession."

Her public image was a "quintessential spinster," a brilliant legal scholar, personable, strict-minded woman who had sacrificed marriage and family to pursue her career. But, Hayes discovered, she was far more complicated than she appeared.

"I found a woman worthy of Shakespeare in her many contradictions, conflicting desires, and paradoxical positions."

Unknown to her colleagues, family or friends, Susie Sharp, Time magazine's "Trail-Blazing Judge," juggled as many as three romantic relationships at a time, relationships that lasted in each case for decades.

Susie Marshall Sharp was born in 1907 in Rocky Mount. After her father passed the bar, her family moved to Reidsville where he practiced law for 44 years and became involved in Democratic politics.

After high school Sharp decided two things: she was going to become a lawyer, and she would never marry. She graduated from N.C. College for Women in Greensboro (now UNCG) and at 19, entered UNC Law School where she was the only woman among 60 men.

"The boys that didn't ignore me treated me rudely," she said.

She graduated second in her class in 1929, and returned to Reidsville to join her father's firm, Sharp and Sharp.

"With all the brashness and egotism of youth," she said, "I thought I could do anything I decided to do. In those days, it wouldn't have been easy for a woman lawyer to have made it on her own. Fortunately, my father provided the business and when the clients found out I could handle it, they eventually became reconciled to me doing it."

As a practicing lawyer she "sometimes felt that some clients thought I should not charge them as much as a 'man lawyer,' but I disabused them of that notion."

Sharp argued her first case and every case for the next 17 years in front of all-male juries. One jury sent her a note, "We think you are too nice a lady to be wasting your time in a courthouse. Every last one of the jury believes that you could get married if you'd put your mind to it like you had done those law books."

In 1939, Sharp was appointed Reidsville's first woman city attorney, and through her father's connections she became increasingly active in politics over the next 10 years. After she helped get Kerr Scott elected governor in 1948, he appointed the 42-year-old Sharp a Special Superior Court judge, the first female judge in the state.

In response, the Greensboro Daily News wrote, "What would happen if Sharp was faced with trying a case of rape? Wouldn't that be too much for a woman?"

"In the first place, there could have been no rape had not a woman been present, and I consider it eminently fitting that one be in on the 'pay-off,'" Judge Sharp wrote back.

In 1962, Gov. Terry Sanford appointed Sharp to the Supreme Court.

"It was," he said, "the most popular appointment I ever made."

In 1974, when Chief Justice William Bobbitt retired, Sharp realized that it could be a long time before another woman in North Carolina would be in a similar position to become chief justice. With the support of her fellow justices, the 65-year-old ran for office against her Republican opponent, a non-lawyer without legal training or experience. She easily won and for the next four years, she addressed issues such as judicial ethics, prison reform, product liability, and divorce settlements.

Surprisingly, Chief Justice Sharp exerted every effort she could to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment, personally lobbying legislators when it was before the 1975 NC General Assembly for ratification.

"I feel like we have the Civil Rights Law," she wrote. "The amendment is not necessary. I think it might deprive women of some legitimate privileges and protections they ought to have."

After retiring in 1979, Sharp traveled, and continued to go to the courthouse with her long-time companion, Bobbitt. In the mid-1980s, she faced a number of family and health crises. Nine of her relatives were murdered or committed suicide, a horrific story of madness told by Jerry Bledsoe in his book, "Bitter Blood."

"The killings were certainly among the most important things that ever happened to her, even though they came so late in her life. She never fully regained her emotional equilibrium," Hayes says.

In 1986 Sharp was hit by a car and broke several bones, which required a long rehabilitation. In 1990 her mind began to slip and two years later, it ceased, for any practical purpose, to exist.

She died in 1996 and is buried in the family plot in Greenview cemetery. On her gravemarker is the Seal of the Supreme Court of N.C. over the words "First Woman Chief Justice, N.C. Supreme Court 1974-1979."

The Greensboro Daily News wrote, "Susie Sharp was an unlikely heroine. But she was one of the best North Carolina has ever had."

Anna R. Hayes, a native North Carolinian, is a former partner in the Raleigh law firm of Manning, Fulton, and Skinner. She graduated cum laude with a degree in history from Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, VA. At UNC School of Law, where she earned her law degree, she served on the editorial board of the N.C. Law Review. She divides her time between Paris and Chapel Hill.

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