Six months after she joined the U.S. Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor told the women of Columbia College that expanded opportunities for women “did not happen by accident.”

It was one of several appearances O’Connor made in South Carolina as the Supreme Court’s first woman justice.

O’Connor had a major brush with the Palmetto State as her confirmation played out in the U.S. Senate. The late Strom Thurmond helped shepherd O’Connor through Senate confirmation. Thurmond, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that first screened O’Connor for the bench, said she would “make an outstanding associate justice.”

When O’Connor spoke at Columbia College’s graduation seven months later, Thurmond was there to introduce her.

Two years later, O’Connor was back in Columbia to speak to the USC Law School’s annual banquet. There, she told 1,100 people that she had “never even thought about” being nominated to the Supreme Court before it happened.

“I’m saving a place for you,” O’Connor told the students, professors, legislators and state judges, “and I hope one of you may one day find a path to that bench.”

Sixteen years later, in 2000, O’Connor received an honorary doctor of laws degree from The Citadel. The degree was awarded a year after the Charleston military college graduated its first female cadet.

“I’m one of the very few alumnae of The Citadel,” O’Connor said then. “It’s going to be a growing number, so watch out.”

Four years earlier, O’Connor and other Supreme Court justices had ruled unconstitutional Virginia Military Institute’s all-male admissions policy. The ruling prompted The Citadel to admit women.

Reach Gould Sheinin at (803) 771-8658 or asheinin@thestate.com.