 Shirley S. Abrahamson. Photograph courtesy of the authors of www.shirleyabranamson.org. By Amy Rabideau Silvers An obituary in The New York Times called her “an indefatigable jurist known for her activist voice and tart dissents.” The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s obituary called her someone who crashed through barriers for women, earning “a national reputation as a leader in liberal judicial thought.” Others called Shirley Abrahamson a mentor and a friend. Abrahamson was the first woman appointed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, serving 43 years on the bench, including 19 years as chief justice. At retirement, she was the longest-serving state court justice in the country, and she certainly remains the longest serving in Wisconsin history. Appointed by Gov. Patrick Lucey* in 1976, she went on to win four 10-year terms. For many of those years, she was the only woman on the bench. By the time she retired in 2019, five of the seven justices were women, later to be joined by a sixth. “Among jurists I have encountered in the United States and abroad, Shirley Abrahamson is the very best,” declared Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a videotaped tribute as Abrahamson retired. “The most courageous and sage, the least self-regarding. “She has been ever mindful of the people—all of the people—the law exists, or should exist to serve,” Ginsburg said. “As a lawyer, law teacher and judge, she has inspired legions to follow in her way, to strive constantly to make the legal system genuinely equal and accessible to all.” An early dream Abrahamson was born Shirley Schlanger, the daughter of Manhattan grocers Leo and Ceil Schlanger. Her parents were immigrants from Poland, and as the family story goes, little Shirley was 4 when she decided that she wanted to be president. At 6, she changed her mind and decided to become a lawyer. She later told the story of wanting a library card after the family moved for a time to New Jersey, while she was in grade school. “My mother and I went to the public library, but I couldn’t get a card because my parents didn’t own property,” Abrahamson recalled. “You see, your family had to own property to get a library card.” Her father ended up taking off work to find the landlord and persuaded him to write a letter. The situation left her feeling “that my family was put into this second-class position. … My father was running a successful grocery business, paid his bills, and why I couldn’t get a library card. … It just didn’t make sense … and it didn’t seem fair.” Fair was something she felt everybody deserved. Facing other challenges She graduated from high school at 16. She next graduated from York University in Manhattan, magna cum laude, and married Seymour Abrahamson. Together they relocated to Indiana University in Bloomington. There she graduated first in her law school class in 1956. She received no job offers. “She was a woman and she was Jewish,” said Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, speaking in an interview with Wisconsin Justice Initiative. “The dean of the law school told her she wouldn’t get a job, but he’d try to get her a job as a law librarian.” Instead, Shirley and Seymour—he earned a doctorate in genetics—moved to Madison. There Abrahamson studied with J. Willard Hurst, a UW law school professor and pioneer in legal history, earning a doctorate in 1962. That same year she was hired at La Follette, Sinykin, Doyle & Anderson—the first woman hired by a private law firm in Madison. Within the year, she became a named partner. Abrahamson soon began teaching at the law school. In 1966, she was offered a professorship in tax law. She accepted on the condition that the other woman on the faculty, Assistant Professor Margo Melli, also receive tenure.  Abrahamson in court (likely early to mid-1960s). Photograph created by Edwin Stein, courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society, image WJI 149705. A master at mentoring Along the way, she offered encouragement to countless others. Angela Bartell, now retired as a Dane County Circuit Court judge, remembers going to the UW Law School to meet with Abrahamson before enrolling in 1968. “She was one of two women professors—Margo Melli was the other,” Bartell told WJI. “My husband graduated from law school in 1968 and there were only four or five women in his class. And so I met with the two women on the faculty and said, ‘How did you do this?’ and they were both very encouraging.” The few women students found support with each other—and in the one women’s restroom in the old section of the law building, complete with a fainting-style couch. “You knew you could likely find women there,” she said. “It was a shelter—that’s really the only word for it—from the battle that was going on outside.” Women found an even bigger challenge at graduation, especially if they wanted to join a private practice. Bartell experienced that firsthand in 1971. “There was the question of whether clients would be comfortable with a woman lawyer. Would women lawyers be a viable economic resource? Were women tough enough to fight in an adversarial system? This is sounding quite quaint,” she said, with a laugh. “I had only one offer, though I graduated first in my class,” Bartell said. “So the profession was not open. I ended up joining the law firm where Shirley was a named partner, so I had a woman colleague. “It became a ritual for law firms to take the new woman and introduce her to Shirley Abrahamson,” she said. “It was a long and bumpy road, and Shirley was this high-performing, welcoming mentor to all, and that was for decades. She was such a pioneer.” Abrahamson was a founder of the Legal Association for Women, which began in 1974, for women in law in the Dane County area. “She was a mentor to women all over the state,” said former Justice Janine Geske, who joined her as the second woman on the Supreme Court in 1993. “Male attorneys would bring their daughters to meet her.”  Abrahamson at her 1976 swearing-in ceremony. Photograph by WiscNews, courtesy of authors of www.shirleyabrahamson.org. Queen of court outreach Abrahamson championed judicial outreach, helping to create programs that included the award-winning Court with Class program. Tens of thousands of students have visited the State Capitol to hear oral arguments and meet with a justice. Abrahamson also believed that the courts could go to the people, promoting the Justice on Wheels effort. That, too, continues. “Pick a county—from Kenosha to Superior, Door County to Rock County—and we go there and have legal arguments and meet with people in the community,” Bradley said. Then there’s the Tootsie the Goldfish lesson, in which kids get to “think like a judge.” “She was the queen of outreach for the courts,” Bradley said. Geske agreed. “She was always thinking of ways to connect people to the courts,” Geske said. That included traveling to speak to any group interested in the legal system. Her friends quipped that no distance was too great and no group too small to talk about the courts. “Before we were close friends, she called and asked if I would go speak because she was snowed in at JFK,” said Geske, who agreed to fill in. “There were maybe 12 people there.” Once while traveling in northern Wisconsin, she ended up in a boat with musky fishermen. “She caught the winning musky,” Geske said. “And she had it stuffed and hung on the wall of her chambers.”  Abrahamson presiding over a Justice on Wheels hearing. Photograph courtesy of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and authors of www.shirleyabrahamson.com.  Play the Toosie the Goldfish game by clicking on this graphic. Creating change and connections In other noteworthy efforts, Abrahamson served on the citizens’ committee studying how to reorganize the state courts in the 1970s. That resulted in the creation of the Court of Appeals. Study committee meetings were being held throughout the state, with one scheduled at the Madison Club. There was only one problem with that plan. “The club had no women members,” Bartell said. “And no women were allowed at the bar level. Shirley Abrahamson was not going to be allowed to attend the meeting. She took that up like a tigress. The committee pulled out of that location and they met elsewhere. “She fought not only so many battles herself but she served as a shield for other women coming up behind her,” said Bartell. Abrahamson was involved in writing Madison’s equal-opportunity law and served as director of the local American Civil Liberties Union chapter from 1967 to 1974. And, later as a justice, she partnered with tribal leaders, including the Wisconsin Tribal Judges Association, to hold the first conference for tribal and state court officials. “She had the first state courts conference ever in the nation,” Bradley said. “I remember sitting at a table with someone from a tribe in Alaska. People came from that far.” Time on Wisconsin Supreme Court During her long years on the court, Abrahamson participated in more than 3,500 cases, authoring 535 majority opinions, 493 dissenting opinions, and 326 concurring opinions. She did not mince words in her dissents. In a 1992 case, State v. Mitchell, the court ruled that an increased penalty in a hate crime case was unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court later reversed that decision. Wrote Abrahamson: “Bigots are free to think and express themselves as they wish, except that they may not engage in criminal conduct in furtherance of their beliefs. The state’s interest in punishing bias-related criminal conduct related only to the protection of equal rights and the prevention of crime, not to the suppression of free expression.” A 2015 case involved whether Gov. Scott Walker had illegally coordinated with conservative groups during a recall effort. A divided Supreme Court decision ended the investigation. “Lest the length, convoluted analysis and overblown rhetoric of the majority opinion obscure its effect, let me state clearly,” she said in her dissent. “The majority opinion adopts an unprecedented and faulty interpretation of Wisconsin’s campaign finance law and of the First Amendment.” Some of her writing was for in-house reading only. “We used to circulate proposed decisions among the justices and conference those opinions,” Geske said of their shared time on the state Supreme Court. “Shirley would issue three-page, single-spaced memos on an opinion. I learned to appreciate what she was doing. She wanted my opinion to be as clear as possible, and her memos helped me write a better decision. She was the smartest and hardest working person I ever met.” Abrahamson began serving as chief justice in 1996, when she became the most senior member of the court. That changed in 2015, with a constitutional amendment to allow justices to select their own chief justice. Conservative justices quickly picked Justice Patience Roggensack. Abrahamson sued in federal court—lost and then appealed—before deciding the case would take too long. Instead, she vowed to remain “independent, impartial and nonpartisan, and help the court system improve.” She retired in 2019, a year after being diagnosed with cancer. She died of pancreatic cancer in 2020. Abrahamson was 87. And beyond Wisconsin Abrahamson earned a reputation throughout the country and internationally, especially well known for what has been called new federalism. “She was among a handful, not even a full handful, of judges and justices in the country really leading the charge of revitalizing state constitutions, and she was at the head of that,” Bradley said in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel after Abrahamson’s death. Abrahamson concluded a 1982 law review article on new federalism by invoking the words of an 1855 decision (Attorney General ex rel. Bashford v. Barstow 4 Wis. 567, 758 (1855)) by the Wisconsin Supreme Court: “The people then made this constitution, and adopted it as their primary law. The people of other states made for themselves respectively, constitutions which are construed by their own appropriate functionaries. Let them construe theirs—let us construe, and stand by ours.” “The idea,” Bradley told WJI, “is that state constitutions may provide individual rights in excess of those given by the federal Constitution. Not fewer rights but more.” Abrahamson was considered for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court as early as 1979 by President Jimmy Carter to fill a possible vacancy by Justice William J. Brennan Jr. (Brennan continued serving until 1990.) In 1993, Abrahamson was on the short list to replace Justice Byron R. White. President Bill Clinton instead chose Ginsburg. Setting the bar on ethics Abrahamson did more than talk about judicial ethics and independence. Judges, she believed, needed to be absolutely beyond reproach. “As a judge, you are not supposed to endorse partisan candidates,” Geske said. Abrahamson did not endorse any candidates or accept any gifts. “She had a hard-and-fast rule,” Geske said. “I could not buy her a cup of coffee. Ann (Walsh Bradley) and I would take her out for her birthday, and she would pay the check. No one could question her ethics.” Should any question of ethics arise, “I would think, ‘What would Shirley do?’” she said. Geske said Abrahamson would have been deeply concerned about questions involving judicial integrity, including the recent decision regarding presidential immunity. “She’d be going nuts at what’s going on right now, especially with the U.S. Supreme Court, at the partisanship and the bias,” Geske said. “That would have really bothered her.” Continuing a legacy Friends and colleagues believe that Shirley Abrahamson’s legacy has the power to inspire others to care about the judicial system. Toward that goal, they began the Chief Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson Legacy Committee. Projects include annual awards for law students committed to “social justice, an independent judiciary, and equal rights for all.” The reading room at the Wisconsin Historical Society has been dedicated in her honor. There’s a website about her with everything from a timeline and family photos to resources regarding her opinions. Committee members are exploring the possibility of a documentary about her life and influence. Should anyone think that Shirley Abrahamson was all serious business, just remember that Toostie the Goldfish is still teaching kids to think like a judge. “Shirley was fun,” Bradley said of her friend. “She had an absolute commitment to maintaining and restoring public trust in the judiciary,” said Bradley. “She believed in justice and equal justice for all.” Whatever the topic, Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson had a way with words. Here are a few quotes, taken from the website dedicated to her legacy. More quotes may be found at www.shirleyabrahamson.org/quotes/.
*Note: This story was updated on Aug. 22, 2024, to correct the name of the governor who appointed Abrahamson. We apologize for the error. (Thank you careful readers!)  This project is supported by grants from  
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Images from the 1887 and 1891 University of Wisconsin Law School graduating class photographs. University of Wisconsin Law Library Digital Repository, Alumni Photos Collection. By Amy Rabideau Silvers In the history of Wisconsin law, it’s safe to say there has never been anything quite like Kate Hamilton Pier and her daughters. Their story began in the 19th century, decades before women won the right even to vote. Miss Kate Hamilton Pier, daughter of mother Kate Hamilton Pier, graduated from high school in Fond du Lac at 16 and wanted to study law at the Wisconsin State University in Madison, now the University of Wisconsin. Mrs. Pier decided to attend law school, in part to accompany her daughter but also to develop her own business skills. “She greatly desired that her daughters should begin business life under her personal supervision,” according to a sort of who’s who published in 1893 with the weighty title A Woman of the Century: 1470 Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life, edited by Frances Elizabeth Willard and Mary Ashton Rice Livermore. “She had started alone and knew what pioneer business undertaking meant for a woman,” the entry continued. “She wished her girls to benefit by her experience.” Mother and daughter completed the two-year law course in one year, graduating in 1887 with high honors. By 1891, two younger daughters, Caroline Hamilton Pier and Harriet Hamilton Pier, followed suit. Of the eight women then practicing law in Wisconsin, four of them were named Pier. They became, as a headline in The Ladies’ Home Journal declared in 1892, “A Law Firm of Women.” That was just the beginning. “Besides practicing law, the Piers also successfully advocated for legislative changes that expanded opportunities for women,” said an article in Wisconsin Lawyer, published by the State Bar of Wisconsin. “One such accomplishment was to secure statutory amendments that removed bans prohibiting women attorneys from appointments as court commissioners.” The change cleared the way for Mrs. Pier to be appointed Milwaukee County circuit court commissioner in 1892—the first woman to serve as a judicial officer in the United States. The Wisconsin Lawyer article, written by Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah C. Dugan, noted that it would be 44 years before a Wisconsin woman was appointed to serve as judge by a governor, and 78 years before a woman was elected. Daughter Kate was involved in several state Supreme Court cases, writing one brief soon after law school graduation and appearing with her father, attorney C.K. Pier. In 1889, daughter Kate—under the name Kate H. Pier—became the first woman to argue before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. She won that case and later others. In 1894, she became the first woman to argue before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, also a victory for her client. The four Piers were among the first 20 women admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court bar, though none of the Wisconsin women argued before that court. To further their feminist mission, “these first twenty women began to move each others’ applications for admission to the Supreme Court bar,” wrote Mary Clark in “The First Women Members of the Supreme Court Bar, 1879-1900." The younger Kate was part of that process, successfully moving to admit her mother and sisters to the U.S. Supreme Court bar. “Regardless of their aspirations to practice in the Supreme Court, these women were motivated to join the bar at least in part by their commitment to furthering opportunities for women. … Their roles as ‘first women’ in the law—attending and establishing law schools, holding positions within the legal profession previously closed to women, and joining bars—reflected and refined their consciousness of breaking down barriers for women in the legal profession. For them, joining the Supreme Court bar was another in a series of steps towards eliminating impediments to women’s participation in the legal profession.” A matter of appearances For its part, The Ladies’ Home Journal observed that the Piers were all “feminine” women who had lost “none of their womanly qualities.” Mrs. Pier was described as a handsome woman whose face “indicates a strong and sweet character, which would temper justice with mercy.” “Miss Kate is very beautiful,” the article continued. “It may be of interest to feminine readers to know that Miss Pier wore, when she plead and won her first case at Madison, a pretty black silk dress, brightened with a bit of color at her throat. It must have been a strange scene, when five most ‘potent, grave and reverend seigniors’ listened to a slip of a girl as she plead her case, and plead it well and with convincing power.” Caroline and Harriet, new members of the family law firm, were also described as pretty girls, “at whom one gladly looks twice.”
Photographs of the September 1892 edition of The Ladies' Home Journal by Amy Rabideau Silvers. Indeed, it was not only the ladies’ magazine that covered matters of personal appearance during court appearances. The Milwaukee Daily Journal, reporting in 1889 on the younger Kate’s Wisconsin Supreme Court appearance, headlined one item “Raving Over a Lady Attorney.” “She is a beautiful girl, little over 20 years of age, a brunette, with bewitching eyes and very heavy lashes, but her striking feature is her splendid black hair, which falls nearly to the floor in a massive braid,” it read. Nowhere in that hundred-plus-word report did it mention the name of the case or other legal details. The Milwaukee Journal report on her case before the Court of Appeals did only slightly better, at least noting the case in question. “For several hours she compelled the attention of Judges Woods, Baker and Seaman, who sat in begowned dignity while Miss Pier expounded law principles,” it recounted. “The fair pleader wore a tightly-fitting gown of black velvet, with a big American Beauty rose pinned on her breast. The case was a personal damage suit against the Crane Elevator company, which Miss Pier won for her client in the lower court, but which the company appealed.” The appeals court upheld the verdict in Crane Elevator Co. v. Lippert. Kate’s client was a 15-year-old employee of the Western Union Telegraph Co., seriously injured after he fell navigating a dark hallway—no gas jets were lit—where the elevator company had left components during a replacement project. Early family life Colwert K. Pier (aka C.K. Pier), was born into a Fond du Lac County pioneer family. His future wife, Kate Hamilton, was born in Vermont in 1845 and later grew up in Fond du Lac, where she taught for three years after graduating high school. “Her first job was teaching school in the town of Empire. Here she received her board and $5 a month,” according to an obituary after her death in 1925. She next taught in the Fond du Lac schools, where high post-Civil War inflation helped push her wages to $22.50 a month. C.K. returned to his law practice after serving in the Union Army, and the two married in 1866. After the death of her father, Mrs. Pier began handling the estate left to her and her mother, which led to others asking her help on real estate matters. “Inheriting an estate from her father while she was still young, circumstances developed Mrs. Pier into one of the pioneer business women of Wisconsin,” an obituary said. “She had training in real estate in her father’s office … and in the bank and law office in which her husband was interested.” So when her oldest daughter wanted to attend law school, Mrs. Pier had reason to think a law degree could be useful to her, too. The Piers move to Milwaukee After graduating, the women returned to Fond du Lac and began practicing law. In 1888, the Pier family moved to Milwaukee, a more likely spot to support their burgeoning family of lawyers. Daughter Kate worked in the Wisconsin Central Railroad’s law department for a year before joining the family firm. C.K. died in 1895. The Pier women continued to practice. Mrs. Pier’s official duties as court commissioner came to include officiating at the weddings of daughters Caroline and Harriet. The elder Kate died in Fond du Lac at the age of 80. Daughter Kate married railroad contractor James Alexander McIntosh in 1901, moving to New York City and quitting her law practice. After her husband’s death in 1916, she returned to Fond du Lac, where she assumed management of the family’s real estate and was again involved in the legal community, including the Wisconsin Bar Committee on Women Lawyers. She died in 1931. Caroline Hamilton Pier married attorney John Roemer in 1897. As a young lawyer, she specialized in maritime and admiralty law. She died in 1938. Harriet Hamilton Pier specialized in real estate law and argued before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. She married Charles G. Simonds, an electrical engineer, in 1905, and later lived in Rhinelander. “There is probably no woman in the state who has a better idea of the lands of northern Wisconsin than Mrs. C.G. Simonds … who, although residing in Milwaukee, spends much time in the wilds of the north,” reported The Milwaukee Sentinel in 1919. “She is also considered an expert in judging lands and her advice is frequently sought.” An obituary in 1943 called her a pioneer timber cruiser (riding trains to estimate timber value), conservationist, philanthropist, and, of course, one of Wisconsin’s first women lawyers. All were “demonstrating most clearly that they are qualified to rank with men in the learned and honored profession of law,” opined The Ladies’ Home Journal article. “It is not probable that any one of these young ladies is unfitted for a home because she has identified herself with an unusual calling for a woman. Only a few years ago, if a woman found it necessary to work for a living, as she often did (apparently suffering both the curse of Adam and Eve) there was no career open to her save school-teaching or dress-making. Now, as a progressive woman says, ‘she can do anything where her petticoats do not catch in the machinery.’”  This project is supported by grants from   By Amy Rabideau Silvers  Meta Berger in 1910. Photograph courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society. Image 52054. More than a decade before the 19th Amendment gave American women the right to vote, Meta Berger was elected as one of the first women to serve on the Milwaukee School Board. She came to politics through her famous husband, Victor Berger, a leader in the Socialist Party. That was not enough to prepare her when the party nominated her as a candidate in the 1909 school board race, just seven years after women in Wisconsin won the right to vote in school board elections. She was, in her own words, “surprised, shocked and frightened.” Meta wired her husband, asking him what to do. “Do nothing, except to accept the honor,” came the answer. “You won’t be elected anyway.” But win she did, part of a wave of Socialist victories that put her reform-minded party in control of local politics. She ran again despite her husband’s reservations. “When I am alone and thinking the matter over—then it always comes to me again that I don’t want either you or the children to take a prominent part in public life,” he once wrote. “You are not adapted to it at all … although (I am sorry to say) that you have acquired a little taste for it through your work on the school board. When your term is over I don’t want you to run again.” Meta ran and won reelection, going on to serve 30 years on the board, including as its president from 1915-1916. She also apparently won her husband’s acceptance of her political role, evident in a letter he wrote to one of their daughters. “Sometimes I wonder whether you girls sufficiently prize the fact that your mother is the first women in America who has ever achieved the honor of being elected president of a school board. And the first Socialist president at that … man or woman.” Through it all, Meta lived her Socialist values. “As a school director, Meta supported progressive measures such as playground construction, 'penny lunches,' free textbooks, and medical inspection of schoolchildren,” according to Kimberly Swanson in the introduction to a memoir written by Meta in the last year of her life. It was published as A Milwaukee Woman’s Life on the Left / The Autobiography of Meta Berger, edited by Swanson and published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press in 2001. “She was also a teachers’ advocate and worked for their tenure, a firm salary schedule, and a pension system,” Swanson continued in her introduction. “Though she was not always successful in her efforts—she failed, for example, in her attempt to provide free textbooks—her fellow school directors nonetheless respected her ‘clear thinking, fresh interest and enthusiasm.’” One victory came at her very first school board meeting. “My fear left me even before the close of the meeting over a question which had aroused my interest and indignation,” Meta wrote in her memoir. “The board was going to discriminate against women by ruling that no woman, no matter how qualified, could become the head of a department in any high school course and was going to replace a woman who had served in such a capacity for a number of years. … “I forgot everything except that I must defend women and their rights, so made my first speech in the school board. It must have been pretty good for I won the fight and women there-after could hold positions equal in rank with men.” Early life—and a political awakening Meta was born in 1873 to a Milwaukee couple, Bernhard and Matilda Schlichting, who came to America from Germany as children. Her father briefly served as a Republican in the state Legislature and then in an appointed position with the Milwaukee schools. Perhaps most importantly in Meta’s life, he also hired a young immigrant, Victor Berger, to teach German classes. Victor proved a friend to the family after Bernhard’s death in 1883. The family struggled financially, with her mother taking in boarders. Meta graduated from the Wisconsin State Normal School, a forerunner to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, in 1894. She taught for three years before resigning her position to marry Victor, 13 years her senior, in 1897. Their marriage proved a loving relationship but not without its struggles, emotional and otherwise. Victor was an opinionated, sometimes volatile man. The family’s finances were often precarious at best, including as Victor struggled to keep his newspapers afloat and accomplish the work of the Socialist Party. “Soon a change in my life took place,” Meta wrote in her memoir. “My husband came home saying he was to attend a Socialist national convention in Chicago (in 1904) within a few days. Again I felt I was left behind. … without saying a word I determined to attend that convention too. I didn’t know quite yet how it was to be managed, but go I would.” She managed to do just that, turning up much to her husband’s amazement. “The convention was a turning point in my life,” she wrote. “I was so interested, so excited, so fired with enthusiasm when I heard those scholarly speeches and arguments, some of which I understood and some I didn’t. But the general drift of the purpose of the convention slowly drifted into my consciousness.” Meta resolved to attend all conventions with her husband, becoming increasingly active, which led to her school board nomination. Other notable roles followed, including appointments to the Wisconsin State Board of Education (1917-1918), the Wisconsin Board of Regents of Normal Schools (1927-1928), and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents (1928-1934). Meta grew in confidence, someone who would voice her own opinions in all kinds of settings, as she did at her first meeting as a normal schools regent. Budgets, she then said, were being figured too closely, schools allowed to deteriorate. The board was “trying to shield the poor legislators by not being too hard on them in our requests.” “I for one would go before them and put the responsibility squarely on their shoulder. If we maintain a fire-trap then the refusal for the money to repair such conditions must be theirs,” the new regent told her fellow board members. “I guess I threw a bomb alright enough. The whole board was up in arms at once and didn’t know just what to do with such an unruly member.” She was actively involved in the suffrage and peace movements, although she sometimes felt a level of scrutiny for her Socialist ways and found those activists to be “well meaning but not courageous.” “Socialist women—even those of middle-class origin, like Meta—identified with the working class and questioned economic arrangements … (and) social traditions,” Swanson said in her writing. “She demonstrated her commitment to expanding women’s roles through her educational and suffrage work, for example, by defending the right of married women to teach,” according to Swanson. “She once criticized a fellow Socialist for making a ‘purely moral’ argument in favor of woman suffrage, meaning that she disapproved of arguments for change based solely on supposed moral differences between men and women. A firm proponent of equal rights, Meta may have sensed that emphasizing differences hindered rather than furthered women’s integration into public life.” Washington and wartime politics In 1910, Victor Berger was elected to the U.S. Congress on the Socialist ticket, necessitating the family’s move to Washington, D.C. “My husband had to resign as alderman in order to represent the Fifth District of Wisconsin in Washington,” according to Meta. “Now not only local problems but national problems were brought into the home. … Naturally everyone in the whole country wanted to know who this lone Socialist congressman elect was and what he was like.” He served until 1913 but was elected again in 1918. Nothing about that victory proved simple. Victor was elected after his indictment under the Espionage Act of 1917, passed soon after the U.S. entered what is now called World War I. His fellow congressmen refused to allow him to take his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Victor and four other defendants were tried in federal court in Chicago. Victor was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Then they learned the conditions for bail pending an appeal. Each man would be released only on $100,000 bond, secured by unencumbered real estate in Illinois. The bail would have to be raised within hours, by the end of the day, or they would be taken to prison. Meta and their Socialist Party friends began raising money. “We began at once to telephone friends and known liberals,” Meta wrote. “I had to call up perfect strangers and say something like this … ‘I am the wife of Victor Berger who was sentenced to serve twenty years in the penitentiary. My husband and the four other defendants must go to prison tonight unless we can raise the sum of $500,000 in unencumbered real-estate. I am told that possibly you would be willing to sign for part of the bond. Will you? Will you keep five men out of prison, pending an appeal of the case?’” The effort worked, with supporters helping to raise more than the $500,000 needed. “We finally got back to the office of the bonding clerk to discover the room filled with people, the legal looking deeds to their property held in their hands or protruding from their pockets,” she said in her writing. A few quick postscripts are in order here. Congress declared Victor’s seat open, necessitating a special election late in 1919. He won with even more votes, but again Congress refused to seat him. Yet another election followed, and Milwaukee voters finally choose a non-Berger candidate to be represented in Washington. In 1921, the conviction was voided by the U.S. Supreme Court, which found that the judge, who had publicly made anti-German and anti-Socialist remarks, should not have heard the case. Victor ran again for Congress, serving from 1923 to 1929.  Meta Berger circa 1925. Photograph courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society. Image 123868. The final chapters Meta became a widow during the summer of 1929. Her husband was struck by a streetcar while crossing the street outside his newspaper office. He died of his injuries three weeks later. Victor Berger’s body lay in state at Milwaukee City Hall, and 75,000 people came to pay their respects. In the following decade, Meta did not hew to the official Socialist Party lines. She explored Communist affiliations and friendships, even traveling to Russia, though she never joined the Communist Party. While the Socialist Party had long had its own philosophies and factions, Meta’s actions were no longer acceptable. In 1940, after she was asked to withdraw from “communist-front” organizations, she instead chose to resign from her longtime party. She died in 1944 at a family home in Thiensville. “Meta Schlichting Berger served her community and her country, as well as her husband and family, by helping to shape her century for the better,” wrote historian Genevieve G. McBride in the forward to Meta’s memoir. “There is no better testament to a life lived well, nor to the lessons she left for the next generation.”  This project is supported by grants from   |
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