EMANCIPATION MAKING OF BLACK LAWYERS

"The year 1944 had a dual significance for black American lawyers because it marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of Howard University School of Law and the centennial anniversary of the admission of Macon Bolling Allen, the first black lawyer, into the legal profession. In addition to these benchmarks, between 1871 and 1944 the law school had graduated more than one thousand students, many of whom had achieved distinction, as Dean [John Mercer] Langston and Professor [Albert Gallatin] Riddle had forecasted. "In addition to being the first American law school to open up its doors with both a black dean and a white professor, Howard University's law school was the first to declare a nondiscriminatory policy in 1869. White male and female students were admitted to Howard University from its inception... "Mary Ann Shadd Carey, a black woman, claimed that she was admitted to Howard University's first class in 1869; if her contention is true, this makes her and Lemma Barkaloo, who entered Washington University's law school in Missouri in the same year , the first women admitted to an American law school. However, the honor of being the first black woman to receive a law degree and the first to be admitted to the bar in the nation belongs to Charlotte E. Ray, who was graduated from Howard University School of Law in 1872. She became the first black woman admitted to the bar of the District of Columbia. Only three other white women had graduated from a law school prior to Ray." P.54-55, "Black Students in the Law Schools, EMANCIPATION THE MAKING OF THE BLACK LAWYER 1844-1944, by J. Clay Smith, Jr. (1993) http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/1790.html