Macon’s own Georgia legislature pioneer

Editor’s note: The following story is part of a feature called Home Grown in which we take a look at the people and products that have made a name for themselves well beyond our Middle Georgia borders.

Two years after women won the right to vote, an editor with the Macon News encouraged attorney Viola Ross Napier to run for the Georgia House of Representatives. She paid the filing fee and, on Sept. 13, 1922, became one of the first two women elected to the state House.

Napier, whose grandfather helped found Macon, graduated from Wesleyan College, became a teacher and married attorney Hendley Napier Jr. Her husband and father-in-law died in the flu epidemic. With four children to raise, she enrolled in law school, passed the bar in 1920 and started her own practice. She was the first female attorney to argue a case before the Georgia Supreme Court and the Georgia Court of Appeals.

As a legislator, she championed the cause of children. Defeated after two terms, she went on to become Macon’s city clerk for 27 years. Napier retired at age 72 and died in 1962.

This story was originally published November 15, 2016 at 1:54 PM with the headline "Macon’s own Georgia legislature pioneer."