GREENSBORO, N.C. — Last month...WFMY News 2 turned 75! So to celebrate...We're opening the WFMY News 2 vault.
September 26, 1969, WFMY News 2 spoke with a woman who lived her life breaking barriers.
Elreta Melton Alexander graduated from Dudley High School as a 15-year-old and graduated from North Carolina A&T State University at 18.
She went on to become the first Black woman to graduate from Columbia Law School.
She then became the first Black woman in North Carolina to be licensed and practice as a lawyer, to argue before the North Carolina Supreme Court, and to be elected a judge!
So, when we spoke to her in 1969, she was a district court judge and had recently ruled on a case sentencing a Vietnam veteran to a mental health clinic after he destroyed public property a month after being back stateside.
She talked to a WFMY News 2 reporter about her thought process.
"Well, as a matter of fact, I don't think that the word punishment is the word that is appropriate for the courts. I think that what we are looking to do is do what is right for the individual and society. I just finished reading a book by Dr. Carl Menninger on the crime of punishment. When we think in terms of the courts as the friend of the person, the defendant who is there, as well as the friend of society, I think we can get a better-orientated society and a more peaceful society," Alexander said.
"I do not like that. Anyone has to fight and kill. And when you teach people to fight and kill, you do expect repercussions when you come back into society," Alexander said.
Courtroom 2-A in the Guilford County Courthouse is named in her honor.
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