Belva Ann Lockwood: First Woman To Argue Before The U.S. Supreme Court

 

By Kristy McCaffrey 

Belva Lockwood was born in 1830 in Royalton, New York, to farmers. From that modest beginning, she would eventually become a self-made middle-class professional woman.

Widowed at 22 with a young daughter, she made the unpopular decision to separate from her child for three years so that she could attend college. She studied at Genesee College, where she became interested in the law. She graduated with honors in 1857 and became headmistress of Lockport Union School. But whether she was teaching or administrating, she was only paid half of what her male counterparts were making. Before pursuing her political career, she bought The Owego Female Seminary where she served as Principal, and she offered a curriculum to the girls that was on par with their male counterparts.

In 1868, Belva remarried to Ezekial Lockwood, a much older American Civil War veteran. He supported her desire for legal studies and encouraged her to pursue subjects that interested her. In 1871, Belva earned a Master of Arts from Syracuse University. She was able to gain admission to the National University School of Law in Washington D.C., but upon completion of her coursework in 1873, the school refused to grant her a diploma because of her gender. She wrote a letter to then President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, appealing to his position as ex officio president of the Law School, asking for justice. Within a week of sending the letter, she was granted her Bachelor of Laws at the age of 43.

Belva Ann Lockwood

In 1876, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court refused to admit her to its bar, so she single-handedly lobbied Congress. They passed “an act to relieve certain legal disabilities of women.”

On March 3, 1879, on the motion of Washington attorney Albert G. Riddle, who had long been her champion, she became the first woman admitted to the Supreme Court bar, sworn in amidst “a bating of breath and craning of necks.” A year later, she argued Kaiser v. Stickney before the high court, the first woman lawyer to do so.

In 1906, Belva represented the Cherokee Nation in United States v. Cherokee Nation. She was successful in ensuring the payment of the five-million-dollar suit, one of the largest made at that time to a Native American tribe for land ceded to the government. She also represented hundreds of family members of Civil War veterans in their pension claims. Lockwood later sponsored Samuel R. Lowery to the Supreme Court bar, making him the fifth black attorney to be admitted, and ultimately the first to argue a case before the court.

Lockwood had a 43-year career as a lawyer.

She was also the second woman to run for President of the United States. She ran as a candidate of the National Equal Rights Party in the elections of 1884 and 1888. Since women couldn’t vote, and most newspapers opposed her candidacy, her campaign didn’t get far.

She died in 1917 and is buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

 

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