Belva Ann Lockwood - Washington, D.C., Remarriage and The Law

Washington, D.C., Remarriage and The Law

In February 1866, Belva and her daughter Lura moved to Washington D.C., as Belva believed it was the center of power in the United States and would provide good opportunities to advance in the legal profession. She opened a coeducational private school while exploring the study of law. In the mid-1860s, coeducation was unusual; most schools were separated by gender.

In 1868, Belva remarried, this time to a man much older than she. The Reverend Ezekiel Lockwood was an American Civil War veteran, Baptist minister, and practicing dentist. They had a daughter Jessie, who died before her second birthday. They also raised Belva's daughter Lura from her first marriage. The Rev. Lockwood had progressive ideas about women's roles in society. He supported his wife's desire to study and encouraged her to pursue subjects that interested her.

As Belva Lockwood later told a reporter at the Chicago Tribune, about 1870 she applied to the Columbian Law School in the District of Columbia. The trustees refused to admit her as they believed she would be a distraction to male students. Lockwood finally was admitted to the new National University Law School (now the George Washington University Law School) along with several other women. Although she completed her coursework in May 1873, the law school was unwilling to grant a diploma to a woman.

Without a diploma, Lockwood could not gain admittance to the District of Columbia Bar. After a year she wrote a letter to the President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, appealing to him as president ex officio of the National University Law School. She asked him for justice, stating she had passed all her courses and deserved to be awarded a diploma. In September 1873, within a week of having sent the letter, Lockwood received her diploma. She was 43 years old.

Lockwood was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar, although several judges told her they had no confidence in her. This was a reaction she repeatedly had to overcome. When she tried to gain admission to the Maryland Bar Association, a judge lectured her and told her that God Himself had determined that women were not equal to men and never could be. When she tried to respond on her own behalf, he said she had no right to speak and had her removed from the courtroom.

In her struggle, Lockwood was going against both social practice and the limited legal standing of women. In 1873, married women did not have many legal rights. By English Common Law, Lockwood was considered a "feme covert" (English version of medieval Anglo-Norman legal term), that is, a married woman. Her status under the law was different from that of a woman who was single, as she was regarded as strictly subordinate to her husband. In many states, a married woman could not individually own or inherit property, nor did she have the right to make contracts or keep money earned unless her husband permitted it. Although Lockwood's husband encouraged her, judges used her married status to deny her access to the courts, including the bar of the US Supreme Court.

Nonetheless, Lockwood began to build a practice and won some cases. Even her detractors regarded her as competent. She became known as an advocate for women's issues; she spoke on behalf of an 1872 bill for equal pay for federal government employees. She was active in several women's suffrage organizations. She testified before Congress in support of legislation to give married women and widows more protection under the law.

Because her practice was limited in the 1870s due to social discrimination, Lockwood drafted an anti-discrimination bill to have the same access to the bar as male colleagues. From 1874 to 1879, she lobbied Congress to pass it. In 1879, Congress finally passed the law, which was signed by President Rutherford B. Hayes. It allowed all qualified women attorneys to practice in any federal court. Lockwood was sworn in as the first woman member of the U.S. Supreme Court bar on March 3, 1879. Late in 1880, she became the first woman lawyer to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ezekiel Lockwood did not live to see his wife's success, as he died in late April 1877. In July 1879 Lockwood's daughter Lura McNall married DeForest Orme, a pharmacist.