Griffiths, Martha W. (Martha Wright), 1912-2003

Martha Wright Griffiths (January 29, 1912 – April 22, 2003) was an American lawyer, judge, and politician who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1955 to 1974 and as Lieutenant Governor of Michigan from 1983 to 1991. She was a member of the Democratic Party.

Born in Pierce City, Missouri as Martha Edna Wright, she graduated from Pierce City High School in 1930 before matriculating to the University of Missouri at Columbia, earning an AB in political science in 1934. In college she met and married Hicks G. Griffiths; the couple went on to study law at the University of Michigan, where Martha Griffiths worked on the staff of the Michigan Law Review. She graduated with an LLB in 1940 and was admitted to the bar the next year. Her first job was working in the legal department of the American Automobile Insurance Association in Detroit. During World War II, she worked as a contract negotiator in the Detroit district for Army Ordnance. In 1946 Griffiths opened her own law practice; Hicks joined a few months afterward. A year later, G. Mennen "Soapy" Williams, heir of the Mennen toiletries fortune and a former college classmate, became a partner in the firm.

Martha Griffiths entered politics at her husband’s suggestion by making an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the Michigan house of representatives in 1946. She later won election to the state legislature in 1948 and 1950. During her first term, she and her husband organized the Michigan Democratic Club, which engineered the election of G. Mennen Williams as governor. In the fall of 1952, Griffiths captured the Democratic nomination for a seat in the U.S. Congress from a Michigan district encompassing northwest Detroit and some outlying suburbs but lost the general election. In April 1953, Governor Williams appointed her a recorder and judge of recorders court in Detroit. The following November, she was elected as judge and served until 1954. The name recognition Griffiths garnered as a 1952 candidate and as a judge helped her mount another bid for the Detroit seat in the U.S. House in 1954, remaining there until her retirement in 1974. Over her ten terms, she was instrumental in including the prohibition of sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and sponsored the Equal Rights Amendment, earning her the moniker "Mother of the ERA".

In 1976, Griffiths returned to politics as the chair of the rules committee for the Democratic National Convention, and in 1982, became Michigan’s first elected lieutenant governor on a ticket with Michigan Representative James Johnston Blanchard. In 1986 the pair was re-elected, but Blanchard decided to drop the 78-year-old Griffiths from the ticket for a third term because of her age, a significant factor in Blanchard's narrow loss in November 1990. After her terms as lieutenant governor, Griffiths resumed practicing law. She retired to Armada, Michigan, where she would pass away at the age of 91.