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Interview with Marcia L. Hincks

IntervieweeInterview with Marcia L. Hincks American, born 1935

InterviewerInterviewed by Michele G. Kostin

Date2000 July 19

ClassificationsGraphics

Credit LineGift of the Connecticut Bar Foundation

DescriptionOral history interview with Marcia L. Hincks who was interviewed by Michele G. Kostin on July 19, 2000 for the Connecticut Bar Foundation's History of Connecticut Women in the Legal Profession Project.

Topics Discussed:

- Early Life and Family Background: Born in New York City. Father was in graduate medical training in surgery at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, then a junior professor of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania. Family lived in New Jersey, Philadelphia area, and New Haven. Father suffered a heart attack in 1939 at age 30 and died in 1950 at age 41. A trust fund was established for her and her sisters' college education by her father's friends.

- High School : Graduated from Dwight School for Girls in Englewood, New Jersey, in 1952.

- College Education: Attended Bryn Mawr College, starting in Fall 1952. Initially planned to be a pre-medical student but changed course after freshman biology. Decided to go to law school in her senior year at Bryn Mawr.

- Bryn Mawr vs. Vassar Colleges.

- Law School Experience: Yale Law School. Majored in political science and decided to pursue law. Was one of seven women in a class of about 150 students at Yale.

- Yale vs. Harvard.

- Marriage: Met her husband, John, during law school. Married John in June 1958, at the end of their second year of law school.

- Post-Law School and Early Career at Aetna.

- Her four children.

- Aetna (December 1961). Was the only woman lawyer in Aetna's law department at that time, which had about fifteen lawyers.

Object number2024.38.6a-d

NotesProject Overview: At the turn of the 20th century, other than Mary Hall, women lawyers were virtually unknown in Connecticut. By contrast, at the turn of the 21st century, law schools were enrolling roughly the same number of women as men. Since their earliest time at the bar, women have become leaders in all areas of the profession at a pace out of all proportion to their brief history and number.

In 1999, the Fellows of the Connecticut Bar Foundation initiated the Oral History of Connecticut Women in the Legal Profession Project. Within the framework of this dynamic project, the Fellows have been creating a permanent video, audio, and photographic historical record of milestone achievements of women as they have become more visible and achieved prominence in the field of law. In 2019, a leadership donation of $20,000 from the law firm of Carmody Torrance Sandak & Hennessey enabled the project to significantly broaden its scope and plan for the future.

Through its first two phases, the project worked with award-winning documentarian Karyl Evans and attorney/photographer Isabel Chenoweth to produce fifty-eight oral history interviews with outstanding female attorneys and 118 portraits of women in the Connecticut judiciary.

The oral history interviews have collected the stories of women whose ingenuity, perseverance, and intelligence dismantled barriers that historically prevented women from pursuing careers in the law. Connecticut has benefited from the efforts of these “pioneers” as they enriched the legal profession by joining the ranks of their male peers and paved the way for more women to join the profession. (Source: Connecticut Bar Foundation)