William O. Douglas - Early Life

Early Life

Douglas was born in Maine Township, Otter Tail County, Minnesota, the son of an itinerant Scottish Presbyterian minister from Pictou County, Nova Scotia. His family moved to California, and then to Cleveland, Washington. His father died in Portland, Oregon, in 1904, when Douglas was only six years old. After moving from town to town in the West, his mother, with three young children, settled the family in Yakima, Washington. William, like the rest of the Douglas family, worked at odd jobs to earn extra money, and a college education appeared to be unaffordable. Though not the valedictorian, Douglas did well enough in high school to earn a scholarship to Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.

While at Whitman, Douglas became a member of Beta Theta Pi Fraternity. He worked at various jobs while attending school, as a waiter and janitor during the school year, and at a cherry orchard in the summer. Picking cherries, Douglas would say later, inspired him to a legal career. He once said of his early interest in the law:

I worked among the very, very poor, the migrant laborers, the Chicanos and the I.W.W's who I saw being shot at by the police. I saw cruelty and hardness, and my impulse was to be a force in other developments in the law.

Douglas was elected Phi Beta Kappa, participated on the debate team, and was student body president in his final year. After graduating in 1920 with a B.A. in English and economics, he taught English and Latin at Yakima High Schools for the next two years, hoping to earn enough to attend law school. "Finally," he said, "I decided it was impossible to save enough money by teaching and I said to hell with it." He traveled to New York (taking on a job tending sheep on a Chicago-bound train, in return for free passage), with hopes to attend the Columbia Law School. Douglas's Beta Theta Pi membership helped him survive in New York, as he stayed at one of its houses and was able to borrow $75 from a fraternity brother from Washington, enough to enroll at Columbia.

Six months later, Douglas's funds were running out. However, the appointments office at the law school let him know that a New York firm wanted a student to help prepare a correspondence course for law. Douglas earned $600 for his work, enabling him to stay in school. Moreover, he was called on for similar projects and had saved $1,000 by semester's end. He then went to La Grande, Oregon, to marry Mildred Riddle, whom he had known at Yakima. He graduated fifth in his class in 1925, although he would thereafter claim to have been second. He went to work at the prestigious New York firm of Cravath, DeGersdorff, Swaine and Wood (later Cravath, Swaine & Moore).