Elreta Melton Alexander and Rhetta Martin made lasting impacts on the legal field in North Carolina, and both are from right here in Johnston County.
Smithfield Native Elreta Melton Alexander: Pioneering Attorney and Judge
Contributed By K. Todd Johnson, Executive Director, Johnston County Heritage Center
On March 21, 1919, Dr. Charles Furlonge delivered a baby girl at the home of Rev. Joseph Cleveland Melton, a Baptist minister, and his wife Alian Reynolds Melton on Caswell Street in Smithfield. She would go on to make history as Elreta M. Alexander, affectionately called Judge A.
One of Judge Alexander’s earliest experiences was a visit from the sheriff to their new home in Smithfield’s Belmont section. He informed them their property legally belonged to someone else. They had been defrauded. Unable to pay off the legal owner, they were evicted. Judge A never forgot her mother’s tears during this traumatic episode.
The Meltons eventually settled in Greensboro in 1930. Elreta displayed exceptional intellect from a young age, starting first grade at four and graduating from high school at 14. As she later recalled, she had to have her appendix removed at age 13, and the doctor told her father she was a precocious child. She couldn’t wait to get home to a dictionary to find out what the word precocious meant.
She attended the Negro Agricultural & Technical College of North Carolina (later renamed North Carolina A&T University) in Greensboro and graduated at 18, launching a brief teaching career. She married a successful physician, Dr. Girardeau “Tony” Alexander, whom she met at A&T.
A turning point in her life came in 1943 when she decided to help a local minister in an unsuccessful bid for Greensboro City Council. He said she would make a good lawyer. She told her husband she wanted to go to law school, and he agreed on the condition that she found a school in New York and stayed with his mother.
She settled on Columbia, quickly learning they had never had an African-American woman in the law school. She was accepted, but it was made clear her performance would determine whether they accepted another Black woman or not. She did not disappoint.
Alexander became the first Black woman to graduate from Columbia Law School in 1945 and went on to become the first Black woman licensed to practice law in North Carolina in 1947. She was also the first Black woman to argue a case before the North Carolina Supreme Court. In 1968 she became the first Black woman in the United States to be elected a district court judge by popular vote.
The achievement of which she was proudest was a Judgment Day program she began for first-time offenders in Guilford County. Community service and an essay on the dangers of their crime were the main requirements. They also had to come up with a rehabilitation plan. Repeat offenders would feel her wrath, but she was known for being fair.
Defendants often heard her say, “You’d better tell the truth, and the truth will set you free.” The war on crime and war on drugs in the 1980s put an end to Judgment Day, but her belief that love and compassion can have a place in the justice system never waivered.
She helped found Alston, Alexander, Pell & Pell, one of the South’s first integrated law firms. In 1974, she ran for Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. She lost in the Republican primary to a fire-extinguisher salesman with no legal training, her defeat leading to a state constitutional amendment requiring all North Carolina judges to be licensed attorneys.
Despite her groundbreaking achievements, her story remained largely unrecognized for decades. Virginia L. Summey has rectified that deficiency in her recent scholarly work, The Life of Elreta Melton Alexander: Activism within the Courts (University of Georgia Press, 2022). Today, a courtroom in the Guilford County Courthouse is named in her honor.
Rhetta Martin: An Unexpected Path from Secretary to Lawyer
Contributed By Emery D. Ashley, Sr.
Rhetta Martin began her legal career as a secretary in the law office of Paul Grady in Smithfield, with no intention of becoming a lawyer.
Working first hand with those in need of legal counsel sparked her interest in becoming a lawyer. After all, she had relatives in the legal profession, including her grandfather, Claudius B. Sanders who is believed to have been the first licensed attorney in Johnston County.
In the 1920s a law degree was not required to practice law. However, the study and knowledge of the law, the necessity of providing evidence of good moral character and passing the bar exam were required.
Women lawyers were few, with only 12 licensed in North Carolina in 1920.
Martin studied in Judge George Pierce Bell’s Law School in Raleigh and later at Wake Forest University. She passed the bar exam in August of 1930.
She summed up her feelings as quoted in the Smithfield Herald, “I’ll never forget the anxiety with which I waited the publication of the names of those who passed.”
Upon publication, she told the Herald, “I believe it was one of the happiest moments of my life.” There were three women who had applied for admission to the bar in 1930 in North Carolina.
She took her oath in the Johnston County Superior Court, becoming Johnston County’s first female attorney. She joined Paul Grady as a junior member in the law firm of Grady and Martin, and began to make her mark in the community.
In addition to work in the law firm, she worked with the county auditor’s office and the county tax collector’s office. In 1941, being regarded as knowing more about tax law than anyone in the county, she was appointed the County Tax Attorney. In addition to her duties as tax attorney, she continued in the practice of law.
In 1951 she was the first woman elected President of the Johnston County Bar Association. The following year, and breaking precedent again, the JCBA elected Martin to a second term as President.
She was a member of the Centenary United Methodist Church, Wesleyan Unit of United Methodist Woman, charter member of the Smithfield Business and Professional Women’s Club and member and past president of the Year-Round Garden Club.
Her hobby was planting flowers and gardening. Those who remember her still speak of her back yard garden, which reportedly had more than 100 rose bushes.
“She was loving but a tough cookie,” her grand niece Becky Boyette Kinkaid said. “I adored her!”
Martin died in 1977.
“I feel confident that in the years to come we shall see and hear more of women in the law, one of our oldest and most honored professions,” Martin is quoted as saying.
Today, about 43 percent of the approximate 27,000 lawyers in North Carolina are women.
