[Two Pieces of Campaign Ephemera for Judge Cecil B. Wiener].

Erie County, NY: Non-Partisan Committee, 1937. 7” x 5¼” bifolium pamphlet, printed three sides + 2¼” x 4” photographic card. Pamphlet very good with some light creasing and toning; card near fine.

This is a pair of unrecorded ephemera issued by the Non-Partisan Committee for the Re-election of Judge Cecil B. Wiener, a pioneering Jewish woman of justice.

Born in 1874, Cecilia “Cecil” Wiener was one of the first two women (with Helen Z.M. Rodgers) to graduate from the University of Buffalo Law School in 1899. She was also the first president of the Buffalo Section of the National Council of Jewish Women. Wiener had a successful private practice and was one of two women in the Erie County Bar Association. In 1908 she became director of the Federation of Jewish Charities (later Jewish Family Services of Western New York), a role she held for 24 years. She earned advanced degrees in social work and was the first woman on the Erie County Child Welfare Board. When the Erie County Children's Court system was created in 1932, Cecil Wiener was appointed its first Judge. She later served as executive director of the Jewish Federation for Social Service, organized the Young Women's Hebrew Association and was president and director of the Buffalo Chapter of the American Association of Social Workers. She died in 1960.

The present card features a photographic image of Judge Wiener, with the tagline for her (unsuccessful) 1937 re-election campaign: “The Children's Court is the Place for a Woman. Judge Wiener is the Woman for the Place.” A pamphlet exhorts that she “must be re-elected,” and the Non-Partisan Committee was organized “to assure this.” The text beseeches, “Who shall decide how to treat children whose family handicaps are often the direct cause of their arrest? Shall it be a person experienced in child problems and family welfare?” It argues that Wiener “has proved herself”: after a decade as a lawyer, “she devoted twenty years to work among the disadvantaged and poor of our city . . . For the good of the children . . . for the good of the community of Buffalo and Erie County, irrespective of party, we ask you to vote to re-elect Judge Cecil B. Wiener, the Children's Judge.”

Rare and vivid documentation of a barrier-breaking woman's career. No holdings of this ephemera were found in OCLC or online. Item #9580

Price: $200.00