Florence K. Murray
Florence Kerins Murray (October 21, 1916 – March 28, 2004) was a pioneering Rhode Island leader. Born in Newport, she was of Irish American heritage and a Catholic. She finished Rogers High School, attended Syracuse University, and earned a law degree from Boston University in 1942. She married Paul F. Murray in 1943; they had one son.
During World War II, Murray joined the Women’s Army Corps and rose to lieutenant colonel, the youngest woman to reach that rank at the time. She worked with Colonel Oveta Hobby in Washington, D.C., and left the Army in 1947. For her service she received several medals, including the Legion of Merit.
After the war, she entered politics as a Democrat. Murray served in the Rhode Island State Senate from 1949 to 1956, becoming the state’s first female senator. She was a delegate to the 1952 Democratic National Convention.
In 1956, Murray became Rhode Island’s first female Superior Court judge. She was named Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Superior Court in 1978. In 1979, she was elected as an associate justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, becoming the first woman on the state’s high court. She retired in 1996 after 40 years on the bench.
Murray received the Silver Shingle Award from Boston University School of Law and was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 1980. She died in Newport in 2004 and is buried with her husband in Trinity Cemetery in Portsmouth.
Her legacy includes awards named in her honor: the Florence K. Murray Award from the National Association of Women Judges and a Rhode Island Bar Association award. The Newport County Courthouse was renamed the Florence K. Murray Judicial Complex in 1990, the first U.S. courthouse named for a female jurist, and a life-sized portrait of her hangs there.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 22:47 (CET).