As a student, Vivian Simpson challenged gender discrimination and sexual harassement at the University of Maryland in the 1920’s. She was eventually thrown out of school after a lengthy court battle.

She enrolled at George Washington University and went on to become a successful lawyer in Montgomery County. Vivian Simpson’s career spanned fifty years, during which time she repeatedly broke barriers for women, earning appointments as the first woman attorney for the Board of Montgomery County Commissioners in 1938, the first woman ever to serve on the Maryland Industrial Accident Commission (now the Workers Compensation Commission) 1940-47, the first woman Secretary of State for Maryland in 1949, and the first woman ever to be elected President of the Montgomery County Bar Association in 1949. She died in 1987.