Belva Ann Lockwood

Widowed at twenty-two years of age, Belva Ann Lockwood used her inheritance to educate herself in law. Although she completed her degree requirements, she only received her diploma after she enlisted the help of President Ulysses S. Grant. Lockwood became the first woman to campaign for the presidency (1884 and 1888). She was nominated by the Equal Rights Party, which Victoria Woodhull had founded and used for her incomplete presidential campaign in 1872. Lockwood’s platform focused on women’s rights issues, particularly suffrage, temperance, and reform for divorce and marriage laws. In 1880, at the age of forty-eight, Lockwood became the first woman to appear before the Supreme Court of the United States and successfully argued for Cherokee land rights. That same year, she also moved for the admission of the first southern black attorney. Despite her major accomplishments in American history, Lockwood’s first (and only) biography was not published until 2007.