Pictures from the Past
By James Bright
Chester County Historian
Sue Shelton White was born May 25, 1887, to James Shelton White and Mary Calista (Swain) White in Henderson. Her father was an educator and lawyer who died in 1893. Her mother was a music teacher and wrote articles for the local newspaper while caring for Sue and her siblings at their home on North Church St. across from the City Cemetery before her death in 1902.
Sue graduated from Georgie Robertson Christian College in 1904 and WTBC in 1905. From 1907 to 1918, she was court reporter for the Tennessee Supreme Court in Jackson. While working there, she became secretary for the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association. In 1918, she joined the National Woman’s Party as editor of their newspaper, “The Suffragist” in Washington D.C. She came back to Tennessee in 1920 to help push the vote in the Tennessee General Assembly to make the 19th Amendment official.
In 1923, she worked for Tennessee Senator McKellar and earned a law degree from Washington College of Law. From 1926 to 1930, she practiced law in Jackson while being active in the state Democratic Party. In 1930, Sue was the Executive Secretary of the Women’s Division of the Democratic National Committee in Washington D.C. In 1935, Sue joined the Social Security Administration as an attorney.
During her time in Washington D.C., she became very close friends with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor. She died of liver cancer on May 6, 1943, at her home in Alexandria, Va.
