Belva Lockwood

Belva Lockwood (1830–1917) Originally a teacher and school principal, Widowed in 1853, she was determined to attend college and graduated at age 27. Belva and her daughter moved to Washington, DC “to see what was being done at this great political centre... and to see what the great men and women of the country felt and thought.” There she married Ezekiel Lockwood. Despite her fine academic rating and ten years in the teaching profession, two law schools denied her applications for fear that a 40-year-old woman would “distract the other students.” She and several other women were finally admitted to the new National University School of Law (now the George Washington University Law School). Although she completed her coursework in May 1873, the law school refused to grant her a diploma because of her gender. She appealed to President Ulysses S. Grant as a Chancellor of the National University Law School, he signed her diploma a week later. By this time, Lockwood was already an established leader and a spokeswoman for the DC suffrage movement, and a lobbyist for women’s equal employment. The first woman licensed to practice law, she was an ardent lobbyist for women’s rights and frequently argued before Congressional committees against sex discrimination. Barred from the Supreme Court based on “custom,” she successfully drew up legislation to allow women to practice in that court, becoming the first woman allowed to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1884, she was the Presidential candidate for the Equal Rights Party, the first woman to run for president on a major party ticket. Even though women did not have voting rights, she received 4,000 votes. She practiced law 43 years, dying three years before women earned the right to vote.