Windie Scott ’74, Political Science
Deputy State Controller and Vice President of the California State Bar

Windie Scott first marched into history wearing a tartan skirt and carrying a­ trumpet for the Sacred Heart Academy marching band. This may not seem significant except that Scott was one of three children selected from a segregated Catholic School in Biloxi, Miss., to integrate the previously all-white Sacred Heart Academy in 1967. Although Brown v. Board of Education was decided in 1954, it took more than 10 years to be implemented in the South, and the first schools to experience desegregation were the private parochial schools such as Our Mother of Sorrows.

“I look at the picture of me in my band uniform, and it forces me to remember how far I have come,” says Scott, a deputy state controller and vice president of the California State Bar. “It was a difficult, emotional time full of taunting and anger.” She pauses. “Ignorance breeds hate, it really does.”

Because of her firsthand experience with desegregation, Scott was asked by Chief Justice Ronald George to sit on the Judicial Council’s Brown v. Board of Education Advisory Commission. As such, she organized events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown decision, including live panel discussions, symposiums, and an interactive exhibit, “The Long Walk to Freedom,” at the State Building. But Scott has even more on her plate.

As deputy to State Controller Steve Westly, she represents him on boards and commissions and works with other deputies to create policies for him. Scott’s particular specialty is tax law, and the probate referee system is under her watchful eye. She was recently in charge of a worker’s compensation task force and regularly handles anything to do with financing, tax, borrowing, and credit ratings.

In addition to her duties at the controller’s office, she is the vice president for the California State Bar, an elected office, and sits on its Board of Governors. Her district alone governs more than 11,000 lawyers in Sacramento and its surrounding areas. In 2002, she was named Lawyer of the Year by the Sacramento County Bar Association and Distinguished Alumni by the UC Davis King Hall School of Law. All this from a young woman who dared to play trumpet for an all-white marching band in the deep South.

As difficult as the experience must have been, it demonstrates Scott’s impressive approach to life and work. Her parents, an engineer and school teacher who graduated from the Tuskegee Institute, were so deeply affected by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. that they pulled up stakes and headed for California. Once there, Scott was enrolled as a junior at Pomona Catholic, an all-girls parochial school in Pomona, and, feeling disenfranchised by the laid back sociopolitical environment in the Golden State, she began to channel her passion into forensics. Her skill led the forensics team to many victories and then followed her to Cal Poly Pomona, where she majored in political science and served as attorney general for Associated Students, Inc.

Scott was accepted at the UC Davis King Hall School of Law and, again, made history, but this time not carrying a trumpet — she was the only black female in her class. Undaunted, she went on to become the first black woman to serve as president for the Sacramento County Bar Association and also for the Women Lawyers of Sacramento.

“It all started at Cal Poly Pomona,” says Scott. “I was attorney general for the student body and was in charge of regulating dormitory issues. It was perfect training for being a lawyer.”