Blanche E. Braxton was the first African American female lawyer in Massachusetts. [1]
Braxton was graduated from Portia Law School in 1921. [2] She lived in Roxbury, Massachusetts. [3]
On March 16, 1923, Braxton became the first African American woman to be admitted to the bar in Massachusetts. [1] Ten years later, on March 21, 1933, she became the first African American woman admitted to practice before the United States District Court in Massachusetts. [1] [4] Braxton was in private practice [1] with an office at 412 Massachusetts Avenue. [5] [lower-alpha 1]
The Massachusetts Black Women Attorneys Foundation provides a scholarship each year named in home of Braxton. [6] It is "awarded to law students of color who have demonstrated outstanding academic excellence, a commitment to public service, and a dedication to the advancement of minoritized people through the legal process." [7]
New England Law | Boston is a private law school in Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded as Portia School of Law in 1908 and is located in downtown Boston near the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
The National Bar Association (NBA) was founded in 1925 and is the nation's oldest and largest national network of predominantly African-American attorneys and judges. It represents the interests of approximately 67,000 lawyers, judges, law professors, and law students.
Charlotte E. Ray was an American lawyer. She was the first black American female lawyer in the United States. Ray graduated from Howard University School of Law in 1872. She was also the first female admitted to the District of Columbia Bar, and the first woman admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. Her admission was used as a precedent by women in other states who sought admission to the bar.
The State Bar of Arizona is the integrated (mandatory) bar association of the U.S. state of Arizona. The Arizona Supreme Court licenses lawyers, while the State Bar administers the regulation of the practice of law. The State Bar, under the direction of the Court, establishes procedures for the discipline of lawyer misconduct and provides education and development programs for the legal profession and the public. Through the Rules of The Supreme Court of Arizona, the privilege to practice law in Arizona is granted solely to "active member[s] of the state bar."
Mahala Ashley Dickerson was an American lawyer and civil rights advocate for women and minorities. In 1948 she became the first African American female attorney admitted to the Alabama State Bar; in 1951 she was the second African American woman admitted to the Indiana bar; and in 1959 she was Alaska's first African American attorney. In 1983 Dickerson was the first African American to be elected president of the National Association of Women Lawyers. Her long legal career also helped to pave the way for other women attorneys. In 1995 the American Bar Association named her a Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement honoree.
Macon Bolling Allen was an American attorney who is believed to be the first African American to become a lawyer and to argue before a jury, and the second to hold a judicial position in the United States. Allen passed the bar exam in Maine in 1844 and became a Massachusetts Justice of the Peace in 1847. He moved to South Carolina after the American Civil War to practice law and was elected as a judge in 1873 and again in 1876. Following the Reconstruction Era, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he continued practicing law.
Mary Hall was the first female lawyer in Connecticut, and also a poet, a suffragist, and a philanthropist. In 1882, the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors' decision to allow Hall to be admitted to the Connecticut Bar was the first judicial decision in the nation to hold that women were permitted to practice law.
The Boston Bar Association (BBA) is a volunteer non-governmental organization in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. With headquarters located at 16 Beacon Street in the historic Chester Harding House, across from the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill, the BBA has 13,000 members drawn from private practice, corporations, government agencies, legal aid organizations, the courts and law schools.
Howard University School of Law is the law school of Howard University, a private, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is one of the oldest law schools in the country and the oldest historically black law school in the United States.
Lelia Josephine Robinson was the first woman to be admitted to the bar and practice in the courts of Massachusetts in 1882.
Marsha V. Kazarosian is an American attorney in Haverhill, Massachusetts notable for handling high-profile cases in the New England area. Her handling of a gender discrimination case involving a country club brought her national recognition. She represented one of the teenaged defendants in the 1990 murder of a young husband by his wife Pamela Smart, who conspired with her teenaged lover to murder her husband for insurance money; the story became the basis of the subsequent movie To Die For starring Nicole Kidman, and the television movie Murder in New Hampshire starring Helen Hunt. Her legal skill was the subject of a cover story entitled The Power of Marsha Kazarosian in a publication geared to the legal community.
Lutie A. Lytle was an American lawyer who was one of the first African-American women in the legal profession. Having been admitted to the state bar of Tennessee in 1897, she also practiced law in Topeka, Kansas, and Brooklyn, New York. In 1898, she joined the faculty of the law school of her alma mater, Central Tennessee College of Law becoming the first woman to teach law in a chartered law school.
Women in law describes the role played by women in the legal profession and related occupations, which includes lawyers, paralegals, prosecutors, judges, legal scholars, law professors and law school deans.
Joyce London Alexander was a US district court magistrate judge. She was the first African American to be appointed Chief Magistrate judge in the United States.
Margaret M. McChesney was the first female lawyer to appear before the full bench of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
Agnes Winifred McLaughlin (1882-1964) was the first woman admitted to practice law in New Hampshire.
Jennie Blanche Newhall (1874–1943) was an American attorney. She was the second woman admitted to practice law in the state of New Hampshire.