Dr. Carol Swain is the guest speaker when the Madison County Republican women meet at the Jackson Country Club, 31 Country Club Lane, today.

The VIP will meet at 5 p.m., and 6 p.m., is for regular admission.

Attire is cocktail dress, food will be served, a cash bar will be available and limited tickets remain – VIP $250 each and $75 for regular admission.

Carol Miller Swain was born on March 7, 1954, in Bedford, Virginia, one of 12 children.

Her father dropped out of school in the third grade and her mother dropped out in high school.

Her stepfather used to physically abuse her mother, Dorothy Henderson, who is disabled due to polio.

Swain grew up in poverty, living in a shack without running water, and sharing two beds with her 11 siblings.

The second of 12 children, she did not have shoes and thus missed school whenever it snowed.

She did not finish high school, dropping out in ninth grade.

She moved to Roanoke with her family in the 1960s and appealed to a judge to be transferred to a foster home, which was denied. Swain instead lived with her grandmother in a trailer park.

After she divorced in 1975, Swain earned a GED and worked as a cashier at McDonald’s, a door-to-door salesperson, and an assistant in a retirement facility.

She later earned an associate degree from Virginia Western Community College.

She went on to earn a magna cum laude B.A. in criminal justice from Roanoke College and a master’s degree in political science from Virginia Tech.

While an undergraduate at Roanoke College, she organized a scholarship fund for black students that by 2002 had an endowment of $350,000.

She finished a Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1989. In 2000, she earned a Master of Legal Studies from Yale Law School.

(PHOTO: Dr. Carol M. Swain)