From collection Candidates
On November 2, 1920 Lillian Exum Clement of Buncombe County, North Carolina won election to the state House of Representatives, as the Democratic Party nominee, becoming the first woman in the history of North Carolina to be elected to the legislature. She was twenty-six years old. She ran in the Democratic primary, beating out two men, before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. During the legislative session she introduced many bills including a proposal for private voting booths to cut back on bribery and intimidation of voters. This was defeated but several of her bills designed to improve public sanitation passed, as did one decreasing the number of years of abandonment required for a divorce decree. Clement worked in the county sheriff's office after school, and began reading law. She was admitted to the bar in 1917, opened her own practice, and became a successful criminal attorney. Clement married in 1921 and decided not to run for office a second time. She died of pneumonia in 1925.
