Gloria Allred

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Allred

Gloria Rachel Allred (née Bloom; born July 3, 1941) is an American civil rights lawyer who is noted for taking high-profile and often controversial cases; she has been particularly involved with cases involving the protection of women's rights.

Early life and family

Gloria Rachel Bloom was born into a Jewish working-class family of Philadelphia on July 3, 1941. Her father worked as a salesman; her British-born mother was a housewife. After graduating from the Philadelphia High School for Girls, she attended the University of Pennsylvania, where she met her first husband, Peyton Bray. The couple had their only child, Lisa, on September 20, 1961, and divorced shortly after. Lisa Bloom is also an attorney and is best known as a former Court TV anchor.

Gloria Bloom moved back in with her parents and continued her education. In 1963, she earned a bachelor's degree in English, graduating with honors. Over the objection of her professor, she wrote her honors thesis on black writers. She tried her hand at a variety of jobs before she decided to become a teacher, taking a position at Benjamin Franklin High School. She began work on a graduate degree at New York University, where she became interested in the civil rights movement. After earning a master's degree, she became a teacher and, in 1966, moved to Los Angeles, California, and lived in Watts. She worked for the Los Angeles Teachers Association and taught at Jordan High School and Fremont High School.

During a vacation in Acapulco in 1966, Bloom was raped at gunpoint. She discovered she was pregnant and sought an abortion, which was illegal for doctors to perform at the time. After undergoing the procedure, she began hemorrhaging and became infected, only recovering after being hospitalized. She did not report the rape, she said, because she didn't think anyone would believe her.

In 1968, she married William Allred. She enrolled in Southwestern University School of Law and later transferred to Loyola University School of Law in Los Angeles. Allred graduated and was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1975. Allred divorced her husband in 1987, retaining her married name.

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Gloria Allred: (1941- ) Gloria Allred is founding partner in the law firm of Allred, Maroko & Goldberg (AM&G). Over the course of her 42-year legal career, Allred has won countless honors for her pioneering legal work on behalf of women’s rights and the rights of minorities. Her firm handles more women’s rights cases than any other private law firm in the nation. Allred is also the founder of Women’s Equal Rights Legal Defense and Education Fund, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that women are treated equally and justly under the law.

Allred understood long ago that she must champion those who cannot match might with might. Her career stands as a testament to the commitment to ensure that the law applies equally and equitably to all. In an interview for In Style Magazine, Allred unabashedly declares, “They can’t buy me, they can’t rent me, they can’t lease me. All right? They can’t give me money not to sue them. All they can do is give me justice for my clients.”

In 2014, Allred received the Lifetime Achievement Award from The National Trial Lawyers for her trailblazing role in combating prejudicial treatment of women and minorities. She was honored at the 2016 International Women’s Forum (IWF) World Leadership Conference with the 2016 IWF Women Who Make a Difference Award. Additionally, Allred received the Lenore Kramer Award for Excellence from the Women’s Caucus of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association in 2018. That same year, the National Organization for Women (NOW) honored her with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Allred studied English at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with honors. She continued her studies, earning an M.A. from New York University, and a J.D. cum laude from Loyola University School of Law.

Allred is a three-time Emmy nominee for her commentaries on KABC television in Los Angeles. Her nationally syndicated television show We the People, with Gloria Allred was also nominated in 2012 for a Daytime Emmy Award. She is the author of Fight Back and Win, My Thirty-Year Fight Against Injustice—And How You Can Win Your Own Battles, which was released in 2007 and has been reprinted in paperback. She is also the subject of a 2017 Netflix original documentary entitled Seeing Allred.