Archibald: The remarkable life of Shalela Dowdy – West Pointer, beauty queen, Supreme Court plaintiff

You might be tempted to look at Shalela Dowdy – one of the plaintiffs in the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark voting rights decision this week – as an exemplar of the American Dream.

And why not? She fits that bill. Then again, who could dream this stuff up?

Dowdy was the oldest of 10 kids growing up in the Roger Williams housing project in Mobile. She and several of those siblings did a stint in foster care in the ‘90s, relying on government assistance and good fortune for survival itself.

Her story could have easily gone terribly wrong. It happens all the time.

But it did not. When she wasn’t helping to raise brothers and sisters, Dowdy committed herself to sports, and to the Junior ROTC program at Murphy High School. She became a track star, and worked her way up to JROTC battalion commander, the top dog.

She parlayed all that to an appointment at West Point, the nation’s military academy, where she ran 800 meters and longer distances on the track team. She says she overcame discrimination to succeed at the academy, but came out proud. She was deployed to Bahrain and spent six years of active duty as an air defense artillery officer. She was recently promoted to major in the Army Reserve.

“You’re kind of thrust into a leadership position within your family structure,” she said. “I’ve always been academically sound, athletically sound. It allowed me to be able to juggle multiple things at once….I’ve always always juggled a lot.”

That’s not even the half of her.