TEXAS SUPREME COURT HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Hortense Sparks Ward, at the time of her suffrage campaign(1917). Photo in the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame from theauthor’s personal collection.safe, and business-like and a woman of keenpolitical perception. When advocating herpositions, Hortense was diligent, assertive,and impressively effective, but not aggressive.She worked within the system, taking care tobring the business leaders of the communityon board. What enormous time, patience,and insightful cultivation of contacts thatmust have taken! Hortense’s daughter RitaCrooker told a Houston Chronicle interviewerthat her mother “wasn’t the militant type atall, although she was very strong. She wasa woman who thought you could get morefrom molasses than vinegar, if you get mymeaning.” 29In 1920, just ten years afterbecoming an attorney, Hortense ran for theoffice of County Judge, but lost. I admirethe bold effort nonetheless. She wasunafraid to face the voters. The all-malejuries that decided cases in Texas until1954 were a different matter, however.Regardless of her acumen and success,she feared that her client’s cause might beprejudiced by a woman’s presence in frontof all-male juries. 30A Mastery ofMass CommunicationHortense was keenly aware ofthe power of the written word to inspireaction. She was well known for her stirringnewspaper articles and pamphlets, the e-mailof that day. For instance, while lobbying forthe Married Woman’s Property Rights Bill, she authored an influential flyer that reminded women of the needfor a new law:When a woman in Texas marries, her husband has the sole management of all her separateproperty and of all her interest in the community property. He may even mortgage or sell everypiece of furniture in the home, and she is helpless to prevent it, even if her earnings have paid forevery piece. He has a right to sell her dresses if he sees fit, and she cannot prevent …. 3129See Karkabi, Houston Chronicle.30See Furlow, Taking the Law into Their Own Hands.31See Pope, Chief Justice Hortense Sparks Ward, 2 (for the quotation above); Hortense S. Ward, Property Rights of Women in Texas(Houston, self-published, 1911), as quoted in Ramos, All-Woman Court, TSHA Texas Almanac.57