Betty Lucille Roberts, née Cantrell, was born in Kansas in 1923. She grew up in Wichita Falls, Texas, where her family struggled greatly throughout the Depression. In 1942, she married Bill Rice, a drill instructor in the U.S. Army Air Forces, and after the end of World War II, they settled in Portland, Oregon, where he worked as a banker. Roberts continued her education while raising a family, and she graduated from Portland State University in 1958. Rice objected to her acceptance of a high school teaching position, and they divorced soon after. She soon got involved in local politics and was elected to the school board in the Lynch Elementary School District in East Portland, Oregon. In 1960, she married Oregon politician Frank L. Roberts. In 1961, she earned a master of science in political science from the University of Oregon, then took night classes at Northwestern College of Law in Portland. She graduated in 1965 and passed the bar in 1966. She was elected to the Oregon House of Representatives as a Democrat while still in law school. She represented Multnomah County in the Oregon House from 1965 to 1968. She and Frank L. Roberts divorced in 1966, and she married Oregon Representative Keith Skelton in 1968, the same year she won a seat in the Oregon Senate, where she served from 1969 to 1977. She ran unsuccessfully for Oregon governor in 1974, and was appointed by Governor Bob Straub to the Oregon Court of Appeals in 1977. She was appointed to the Oregon Supreme Court in 1982 by Governor Vic Atiyeh, and she retired in 1986. After retiring, she focused her efforts on women's rights. She helped found Oregon Women Lawyers in 1989, and she presided over the state's first legal same-sex marriage ceremony in 2004. She died in 2011.

Sources: Collection guide for oral history interview with Betty Roberts, SR 1126, Oregon Historical Society Research Library; "Betty Roberts (1923-2011)," by Gail Wells, Oregon Encyclopedia, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/roberts_betty_1923_2011_/

The 1968 Democratic National Convention was held at the International Ampitheatre in Chicago, Illinois, from August 26 to August 29, 1968. The Democratic Party was divided over the issue of the Vietnam War, which led to a tense and contentious convention. Despite not having entered any of the prior 13 state primary elections for United States presidential nominee, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey (1911-1978) won the nomination with 1,567 and three-quarters delegates. On August 28, about 10,000 protesters gathered in Grant Park, planning to march to the convention site. Chicago police clashed violently with these demonstrators. In the general election that year, Humphrey was narrowly defeated by Republican Richard Nixon (1913-1994), with 31.7 million votes for Nixon as opposed to 31.2 million for Humphrey, and 10 million votes for third-party candidate George Wallace.

Source: "1968 Democratic National Convention," Wikipedia (accessed February 4, 2025), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Democratic_National_Convention