Belva Lockwood

Belva Lockwood

Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood (October 24, 1830–May 19, 1917) was among the first female attorneys in the United States and in 1879 she became the first woman ever allowed to practice at the bar of the United States Supreme Court. In 1884 she became the first woman to run a full campaign for the United States Presidency and in 1888 she ran a second time. Although defeated twice she never gave up her advocacy for equality for women, both professionally and politically.

Until her death in 1917 she worked tirelessly on behalf of the Universal Peace Union and travelled extensively as their spokesperson. She was not only an advocate for women but for the rights of Native Americans and religious minorities (see the Mormons).

However, for all of her accomplishments, she died only one step ahead of poverty. Her significance in the history of women's rights in America has recently been re-established through a biography written about her by Jill Norgren titled, Belva Lockwood, the Woman Who Would be President. In defense of the disenfanchised whom she represented Lockwood stated simply, "Equality of rights and privileges is but simple justice."

Early life and education

She was born Belva Ann Bennett in Royalton, New York, on October 24, 1820, the second daughter, and second of five children of farmers Lewis J. and Hannah Green Bennett. Her mother's family were said to be descendants of early Puritan dissidents Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. Her father's anscestors were Scottish and became part of the bustling frontier economy of northern New York state in part supported by the construction of the Erie Canal in 1825.

At the age of fourteen, her formal education ended when she became a rural schoolteacher boarding with the parents of her students. At the age of eighteen, she married farmer Uriah McNall, but his death three years later, after the birth of their only daughter, Lura, renewed Lockwood's determination to finish her education. Leaving her daughter in the care of her parents she went back to school to pursue a "ladies seminary degree." She later admitted that all of her friends and advisers objected to this idea and that she "was compelled to use a good deal of strategy to prevent an open rupture."

Lockwood graduated with honors from Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, which eventually became part of Syracuse University in Lima, New York in 1857. During her years at college Lockwood converted to Methodism and became an advocate of temperance, abolition and women's rights. For several years she taught school and advocated new methods for teaching girls such as Catharine Beecher's exercise regimen.

Lockwood, frustrated with her attempts at educational reform and intrigued by the possibilities of politics, decided to move with daughter, Lura, to Washington, D.C. to begin a new life, albeit, one with an uncertain future.

Supreme Court attorney

At the end of the Civil War, when politicians were heatedly debating the voting rights of freedmen, Lockwood, along with other women leaders of the era, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Josephine Griffing, took up the banner of universal suffrage which would guarantee voting rights for all Americans that were not contigent upon race or sex. Lockwood's real interest in women's rights, however, was to be based on employment discrimination and the "inequality that prevailed between the payment of men and women for identical work."

In 1868, she married Ezekial Lockwood, a dentist, lay minister, and claims agent. They had a daughter, Jessie, who died before her second birthday. In 1877, Ezekial, several years older than his wife passed away while Luru, remained her mother's assistant and political ally until her own untimely death in .....

In 1872, Lockwood earned her law degree from National University Law School (now the George Washington University Law School), who initially had refused to grant her the degree until she prevailed upon the help of then president Ulysses S. Grant in order to became one of the first female lawyers in the United States.

Still she was not allowed to practice in the U.S. Court of Claims or the United States Supreme Court. The laws of coverture, which recognized a woman's rights as inherently tied to her husband's were often the basis of discrimination against women in term of property rights and employment opportunity.

However, Lockwood continued to lobby Congress from 1874 to 1879 for an anti-discrimination bill that would expand the powers of female attorneys. In 1879 Congress passed a law allowing all qualified women attorneys to practice in any federal court. Lockwood was sworn in as the first woman member of the United States 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. Ironically, Belva Lockwood, like other American women until the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, was not allowed to vote.

Candidate for U.S. Presidency

She was the second woman (after Victoria Woodhull) to run for President of the United States but was the first woman to appear on the ballot in United States presidential election, 1884 and United States presidential election, 1888 as the candidate of the National Equal Rights Party. Her running mates were Marietta Stow and Charles Stuart Wells respectively. She did not have a serious chance of winning the Presidency and received few votes, particularly because many states still did not allow women to vote at this time. On January 12, 1885, she petitioned Congress to have her votes counted, making the claim "that during the recent session of the Electoral College of the State of Indiana at the capitol thereof, that after it had cast its vote for Cleveland it changed its mind, as it had an undisputed legal right to do, and cast its united vote for your petitioner." She further claimed she "received one-half the electoral vote of Oregon, and a large vote in Pennsylvania, but the votes in the latter state were not counted, simply dumped into the waste basket as false votes."

Indian rights and religious minorities

She was a well-respected and often controversial writer, determined, practical, and energetic. She played an important role in the advancement of rights for women and was an active member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and also the Equal Rights Party.

International peace activist

She was very active in the Universal Peace Union, representing the group at meetings in Europe and lobbying its positions before Congress and at the White House. She hoped that the group would receive the Nobel Peace Prize, but it did not.

Legacy

Unlike her contemporaries, Margaret Fuller or Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lockwood was not born into a family of social standing or economic means. Even in that sense, she was entirely a self-made person of great ambitious, resolve and fortitude.

Put conversion to Methodism here. p. 9

The small communities of Belva, West Virginia, and Lockwood, West Virginia, are named in her honor. In her day, girls were also named for her. During WWII, a merchant marine ship was given her name.

In World War II the United States liberty ship SS Belva Lockwood was named in her honor.

The New York State Library and Archives in Albany, New York, has a Belva Ann Lockwood Collection, 1830-1917. Swarthmore College has the Belva Ann Lockwood Papers 1878-1917, 1984, 1986, 1992. The Archives of Syracuse University also has alumnae records, clippings, correspondences, and other material about Lockwood [1]. The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., owns a portrait of Lockwood depicted in 1908, when she received an honorary doctorate in law from Syracuse University. [2]

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Cook, Frances A. Belva Ann Lockwood: for Peace, Justice, and President (1997) Women's Legal History Biography Project, Robert Crown Law Library, Stanford Law School.
• Norgren, Jill. Belva Lockwood, Blazing the Trail for Women in Law. Prologue Magazine. Spring 2005, Vol. 37, No. 1.
• Norgren, Jill. Belva Lockwood, Blazing the Trail for Women in Law, Part 2. Prologue Magazine. Spring 2005, Vol. 37, No. 1.
• Norgren, Jill. [3]Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President. NYU Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-81475834-2

Notes

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