WYOMING — This Black History Month, get to know a pioneering Black woman who was dedicated to giving new meaning to the “Equality State” moniker.
Liz Byrd, born Harriet Elizabeth Rhone, became the first Black woman to serve in the Wyoming state legislature.
“A fourth generation Wyomingite, Byrd overcame racial discrimination to grow into one of the state’s most respected figures,” reads an article about Byrd published in the University of Wyoming’s (UW) alumni magazine in 2012.
She was born in Cheyenne in 1926. Her family had arrived in Wyoming with the burgeoning railroad industry, Byrd told Wyoming PBS in 2003. She said her grandfather saw Wyoming gain official statehood in 1890.
Byrd earned her college degree from the historically Black college West Virginia State College and planned to become an elementary school teacher in Wyoming, but she was denied work in the Laramie County School District because of her race, according to UW. Instead, she began her teaching career on an Air Force base in Cheyenne. The district reversed its decision in 1959 and hired Byrd to be an elementary school teacher, which she would do for the next 27 years, meanwhile earning a master’s degree from UW.
In 1980, Byrd was elected to the Wyoming State House of Representatives, becoming the first-ever Black woman to serve in the Wyoming state legislature. She served in the House for eight years before running for the Wyoming State Senate in 1988, where she served for four years as the first-ever Black senator in the state.
Among her achievements in the legislature was Byrd’s championship of a paid holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, which passed in the state in 1991 as “Equality Day,” according to the Wyoming Historical Society. She presented it to lawmakers nine times before it passed.
“When she took on a project there was no stopping until a solution had been found, even if it meant restarting and retooling many times,” her son James told the Wyoming Historical Society. “She was most passionate about social justice, hence the Martin Luther King holiday bill.”
Byrd is also remembered for her legislative work on handicap parking, child safety restraints and social services for adults, according to the Wyoming Historical Society.
Byrd was married to James W. Byrd, who went on to become the first Black chief of police in Cheyenne. Together they had three children; their son James followed in his mother’s footsteps and served in the House of Representatives from 2009-2018, according to the state legislature.
When she died in 2015, then-Governor Matt Mead commemorated her by stating, “She was a leader who demonstrated that each person makes a difference. She was a role model for all people, for women and for Wyoming.”
This story runs annually.
