PORTLAND, Ore. — Every week during Women’s History Month, we’re highlighting a woman important to Oregon. Last week we highlighted Maurine Neuberger, Oregon's first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate on behalf of the state.
Mercedes Deiz was the first Black woman admitted to the Oregon State Bar and later became the first woman of color to be an Oregon judge.
Born in New York to immigrant parents as Mercedes Frances Lopez, she graduated from high school at 16 during the Great Depression. She took a job at a high-end retail store where she made $1 an hour cleaning out dressing rooms.
She later began working at the Lafayette Theater. She worked the switchboard telephone system while simultaneously taking night classes in French to qualify to be admitted to Hunter College. She continued her work at the theater while going to school. She met her husband Billy Owens while working at the theater. They married and had one son.
Deiz came to Portland in February 1948 to get a divorce. Her brother, one of nine siblings, lived In Portland at the time. She began a thriving social life in Portland’s Black community and turned her attention to Civil Rights work centered in Portland’s Albina neighborhood, according to the Oregon Encyclopedia. She went to Temple Beth Israel and found work at the IRS through a friend. She met her second husband, Carl Deiz, through that work. They married in 1949.
Deiz was part of Portland’s Urban League and the NAACP. She attended the World Affairs Council of Oregon programs at Reed College and was part of the Interracial Fellowship Group, a group that focused on and promoted understanding among women of different races and cultures.
She started her law career as a legal secretary. Her boss as the time, Graham Walker, encouraged her to go to law school at night and even paid for her first semester tuition at Northwestern College of Law, which is now Portland’s Lewis & Clark Law School in 1955.
Deiz not only graduated four years later, but also ranked fourth in her class and was the only woman. She did not pass the bar exam on her first try, but did pass on her second.
Her first trial, in October 1960, was covered by The Oregonian, as she was the first Black woman admitted to the Oregon Bar. She worked briefly as a hearings officer for workers’ compensation cases — the only woman in that position. Governor Tom McCall ushered her into working on the Multnomah County bench where she was the first woman of color to serve as a circuit judge. In 1972, she won the election to be part of the Multnomah County Circuit Court, making her the first Black woman to be elected to the bench in Oregon. She served there until she retired in 1992, which was the year she turned 75. It was a mandatory retirement — according to the Oregon Encyclopedia, Deiz retired with reluctance.
Deiz was a founder of Oregon Women Lawyers (OWLS) and the National Association of Women Judges. OWLS honors Deiz’s memory with the Judge Mercedes Deiz Award, which recognizes a person who has made “an outstanding contribution to promoting minorities in the legal profession and in the community.”
Deiz died in October 2005 in Portland.
