Shirley Adelson Siegel
Shirley Adelson Siegel (born 1918) is a lawyer whose work as a housing activist and advocate has spanned over seventy decades.[1] Siegel was the first head of New York State’s Civil Rights Bureau and served as New York State’s solicitor general.[1]
Early life
Siegel was born on July 3, 1918 to Jewish immigrant parents born in the part of Czarist Russia that is now known as Lithuania.[2] Her father’s name in Europe had been Abramowicz, but upon immigrating he changed it to Adelson.[2]
When Siegel was in her last year of high school, her family faced eviction from their home in Inwood.[2]
Education
Siegel graduated as valedictorian of her high school class in 1933 at the age of fourteen.[2]
Siegel attended Barnard in the 1930s, at a time when Barnard had a quota for Jewish students.[2] As an undergraduate at Barnard in the 1930s, Siegel became committed to the cause of affordable housing.[3] Her interest in housing developed after she served as an intern with the New York Legislative Service in 1936 and was assigned to become knowledgeable about the field of housing.[4] During her internship, Siegel encountered Charles Abrams and Langdon Post of the New York City Housing Authority.[4] Siegel studied government at Barnard and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.[4] After graduating from Barnard in 1937,[5] Siegel was voted the recipient of a student-funded fellowship available to one graduating Barnard student to study abroad.[4] Siegel attended the London School of Economics,[6] where she continued to develop her studies of housing. Siegel entered Yale Law School in 1938 as the only woman in her class.[1]
Career
Upon graduation, Siegel interviewed with over forty firms before eventually landing a job at Proskauer, where she was the first woman ever at the firm.[7] In 1959, New York Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz hired Siegel to run the newly-founded Civil Rights Bureau[7] of the New York State Law Department.[1] In that office, Siegel challenged the discriminatory hiring practices of the citywide building trade unions.[7] Siegel served as general counsel of the New York Housing and Development Administration under New York Mayor John V. Lindsay.[8] As an active member of the New York City Bar, Siegel ultimately became chair of the City Bar Committee on Housing and Urban Development.[7] In 1979, Siegel was appointed New York State’s Solicitor General by Attorney General Robert Abrams.[8] She served in that office until 1982.[9]
Miscellaneous
As a volunteer with the ACLU in the early 1940s, Siegel volunteered on the Supreme Court case challenging Japanese internment camps.[9] Siegel also authored The Law of Open Space.[9]
References
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