Charlotte E. Ray

Charlotte E. Ray, who lived from January 13, 1850, to January 4, 1911, was the first African American woman to become a lawyer in the United States. She graduated from Howard University School of Law on February 27, 1872, becoming the first woman to graduate from that law school, having specialized in corporate law during her studies. On the strength of her degree she became the first woman admitted to the District of Columbia bar and the first woman permitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. She opened her own law practice in Washington, D.C., but racial and gender discrimination made it difficult to sustain a client base, and she eventually left the law to become a teacher in Brooklyn, remaining active in the women's suffrage movement. Her father, the Reverend Charles Bennett Ray, was an abolitionist and newspaper editor, and her own admission to the bar served as a precedent cited when women in other states sought admission to practice law.