An article from THE VOTER, A Publication of the LWV of Alabama

In Memoriam

Anne Findley Shores

League of Women Voters of Alabama President

LWV of Greater Birmingham President

Civil Rights Pioneer

Good Friend

ANNE FINDLEY SHORES

Alabama Leaguers received word January 30 that Anne Findley Shores, former president of both the Birmingham League and the League of Women Voters of Alabama had just passed away. A lifelong Alabamian until her health began to fail, Anne had lived with her daughter in Little Rock for the past four years, but up until that time had been an active member of her local and state Leagues since the 1960s.

In a day when it took real courage to support school desegregation, Anne,
as the voice of the League, was ostracized by some acquaintances and
received at least one death threat. She worked throughout her life for
judicial fairness, education, and constitutional reform. Her work on CR won her the Joyce Woodworth Award of the LWVAL in 2002.

Her daughter Elizabeth reports that as she watched the inauguration of
President Obama last fall, she recalled the League’s strategy for reducing
public tension by dispatching voter registrars (duly deputized leaguers) to
black churches and white churches equally “to register not black voters or
white voters but Alabama voters.”

Alabama, the League of Women Voters, and those of us who knew her have lost a friend and a noble example of the civic virtues we stand for.

-- Charlotte Ward