Belva Lockwood

Belva Ann Lockwood, who lived from October 24, 1830, to May 19, 1917, was an American lawyer, politician, educator and author who became the first woman admitted to practice law before the United States Supreme Court in 1879 and, in 1880, the first woman to argue a case before that court. She maintained a legal career spanning forty-three years and was among the first women lawyers in the United States, also successfully representing the Cherokee Nation in a land claim that secured a five-million-dollar settlement. In 1884 and again in 1888 she ran for president of the United States on the ticket of the Equal Rights Party, becoming the first woman to appear on official election ballots for the office, a distinction sometimes mistakenly credited to Victoria Woodhull, who could not legally have qualified because she was under the constitutional minimum age for the presidency. Lockwood was also active throughout her life in the women's suffrage movement and in international peace advocacy, campaigning for equal pay for women and broader legal reform.