Alabama Women's Hall of Fame
The daughter of prominent Civil Rights attorney Arthur Shores, Judge Helen Shores Lee also forged a path in the field of law, becoming the first African American woman appointed and elected to the Civil Division of the Jefferson County Circuit Court, Birmingham Division.
Born in Birmingham in 1941, Helen Shores lived with her family in the Birmingham community of Smithfield, in an area known as “Dynamite Hill” for the many bombings that occurred there during the Civil Rights Movement. Though Shores had graduated from Fisk University and married Robert (Bob) Lee in 1962, the two bombs that detonated outside of the Shores home in the fall of 1963, just a few weeks before the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, had a lasting impact on her. Already living in California, where she earned a Master’s Degree in Psychology from Pepperdine, Lee vowed to never return to Birmingham. When she did return in 1971, she found a Birmingham very different from the one she had left. Though she worked in the mental health field upon her return, she ultimately enrolled in Cumberland School of Law at the age of 43 so she could practice law with her father. She joined his firm in 1988 upon passing the bar. Lee focused on advocating for social justice and equality; fighting against segregation and racial discrimination; and focusing on civil rights and employment discrimination cases. In 2003, she was appointed to the bench, where she served until she retired in 2016.
In her autobiography, Lee wrote, “As an attorney and as a judge, I was determined to serve as an agent of further change for the good of Birmingham’s populace. Our father’s fierce love for and dedication to this hurtful and wounded city had taken deep root in my own heart.” She embodied the calling to serve mankind and to leave her community and state in a better place than she found it. Helen Shores Lee passed away in 2018, having lived a life demonstrating that one cannot be defined by what others do to you, but what you can do for the betterment of humanity.
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Alabama Women's Hall of Fame