Belva Ann Lockwood

The attorney and social justice activist Belva Ann Lockwood was a trailblazer for women’s rights. As a teacher in the 1850s, she reduced gender inequality in education by implementing fitness and public speaking classes for girls. In 1879, after lobbying successfully for a congressional bill permitting women to argue before the Supreme Court, she became the first woman to do so. While campaigning for women’s right to vote, she ran twice for president (in 1884 and 1888) as the Equal Rights Party nominee.

In 1902, toward the end of her forty-year legal career, Lockwood represented the Eastern Band of Cherokee and obtained a substantial settlement from the U.S. government for money owed on an 1838 land treaty. In this portrait, the artist Nellie Mathes Horne emphasized Lockwood’s intellectual achievements, representing her in the academic robes she received with her honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Syracuse University in 1909.