Lorena Weeks

Lorena W. Weeks (born 1929) was the plaintiff in an important sex discrimination case, Weeks v. Southern Bell. She claimed that Southern Bell had violated her rights under the 1964 Civil Rights Act when they denied her application for promotion to a higher paying position because she was a woman. She was represented in the case by Sylvia Roberts, a National Organization for Women attorney. She lost the initial case but won in 1969 after several appeals.

Early life Lorena Weeks was born in 1929 in Columbia, South Carolina. Her family moved around before settling in Louisville, Georgia when she was nine years old. Around the same time, her father died in a sawmill accident, leaving her mother to raise and provide for Lorena and her three siblings. In 1947, when Lorena was 18, her mother died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Lorena was left to care for her younger siblings. In order to support them, she worked a four-hour shift as a waitress before working an overnight shift as a telephone operator for Southern Bell. She married Billy Weeks, an electrician who happened to have the same last name. She took a five-year break from working at Southern Bell when she had three children in rapid succession. Lorena and Billy wanted their children to be able to send their children to college so Lorena went back to work "as soon as my girl was old enough to call me on the phone to talk." Lorena Weeks donated her papers to them in 2010.