Woman of the Century/Rosa Lee Tucker

TUCKER, Miss Rosa Lee, State Librarian of Mississippi, born in Houston, Miss., 1st September, 1868. ROSA LEE TUCKER. She is a daughter of the late General W. F. Tucker, who served in the Confederate army during the Civil War. After the war. General Tucker, like most of the southern men, impoverished by the long struggle, resumed the practice of his profession, that of law, and became one of the most successful lawyers in Mississippi. Like the majority of the men of the South, he lived beyond his means. Consequently, when he died, in 1881, his family was left in straitened circumstances. Rosa Lee, who was then thirteen years old, remained in school until she was sixteen. After her graduation she taught school for one year. In 1886 she became the manager of the post-office in Okolona, Miss., where her mother was postmaster. She managed the office acceptably for two years. In 1888 she was elected State Librarian of Mississippi, and has filled the position satisfactorily. As she was less than twenty years old when elected to that responsible position, she can doubtless claim to be the youngest woman ever chosen to fill an office of so high a grade. She is in every essential a southern woman, and in her career she has shown a wonderful degree of the energy and progressiveness which have enabled the women of the South to adjust themselves so readily to the new conditions following the overthrow of the social structure of the South