Arabella Mansfield

Arabella Mansfield, born Belle Aurelia Babb on May 23, 1846, and dying on August 2, 1911, became the first woman admitted to practice law in the United States when she was admitted to the Iowa bar in 1869. Iowa law at the time restricted the bar examination to men, but Mansfield took the exam anyway and scored highly enough that she successfully challenged the restriction, prompting Iowa to become the first state to open its bar to women and to racial minorities by changing its licensing statute. She graduated as valedictorian of her class at Iowa Wesleyan College after completing its four-year course in three years, and although she held a license to practice law she spent most of her career as a college educator and administrator, teaching at Iowa Wesleyan and later serving as dean of two schools at DePauw University in the 1890s. She was also active in the women's suffrage movement, chairing the Iowa Women's Suffrage Convention in 1870 and working alongside Susan B. Anthony.