[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 41 (Friday, March 22, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E432-E433]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     TRIBUTE TO A GREAT TEXAS WOMAN

                                 ______


                       HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, March 22, 1996

  Ms. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues 
to join me today in a tribute to a woman who has made a career out of 
championing women's issues. At age 76, Ms. Louise Raggio, who still 
practices law full-time at her firm, Raggio & Raggio in Dallas, is 
known as the Lone Star State's First Lady of women's legal rights.
  In the 1950s, attorney Raggio fought to allow women to serve on 
juries. In the 1960s she led a group of legal experts in crafting the 
Texas Marital Property Act of 1967 that gave married women equal rights 
to control property and conduct business. With the success of that law, 
Mrs. Raggio helped pave the way for passage of the Equal Rights 
Amendment and other national women's rights legislation. A decade 
later, she helped write the Texas Family Code of 1979, the world's 
first fully codified set of family laws.
  Mrs. Raggio has also achieved many firsts in her 40-year career, 
including being the first woman prosecutor for Dallas County, first 
women director of the State Bar of Texas, first

[[Page E433]]

woman trustee and chair of the Texas Bar Foundation and first recipient 
of the Dallas Bar Association's Outstanding Trial Lawyer Award. In 
1995, she received the American Bar Association's Margaret Brent Women 
Lawyers of Achievement Award, placing her among other outstanding 
recipients Attorney General Janet Reno, Supreme Court Justice Ruth 
Bader Ginsberg, and former U.S. Representative Barbara Jordan.
  For all of these reasons and more, I submit this tribute here today, 
for a great Texas lady.

                          ____________________