Stephen M. White (January 19, 1853 – February 21, 1901)

Born in San Francisco, Stephen White attended Santa Clara College and read law in the office of Charles Bruce Younger Sr. in Santa Cruz, California and was admitted to the bar in 1874. He came to Los Angeles to practice and served as the Los Angeles County District Attorney from 1882 to 1884. Before becoming district attorney in 1882, White was a charter member of the first Los Angeles County Bar Association. He was also a member of the California State Senate from 1887 to 1891, where he served as president pro tempore both sessions, as Acting Lieutenant Governor (1888), and later represented California for one term in the United States Senate from 1893 to 1899.

He undertook and won the Free Harbor Fight, a seven-year struggle to secure a deep-water harbor at San Pedro–forerunner to today’s Port of Los Angeles. He is also remembered as a criminal defense attorney. When he died in 1901 he was acclaimed in San Francisco and Los Angeles as the state’s “most brilliant genius,” as “perhaps the most eminent of the State’s native sons.”