Home
Save the DateThe Washington Bar Association
|
|
|
President’s Column - By Iris McCollum Green Greetings to the WBA Membership, We proudly join the country in celebration of Women’s History Month and salute African American women pioneers in the law. Although not as a lawyer Luce Terry was the first voice of a black woman heard before a Supreme Court. She successfully argued her family’s property issue before the Vermont Supreme Court against two of the state’s leading lawyers, one who eventually became chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court. |
 |
|
Charlotte E. Ray, the first African American woman to become a member of the D. C. Bar or any state bar; Gertrude Rush, the only female African American founder of the National Bar Association; Ollie May Cooper and Isadore Letcher, the first African American females to open their own law practice; Juanita Kidd Stout, the first African American female to be elected a judge in the United States; Constance Baker Motley, the first African American woman to serve as a Federal judge; Jewel S. Lafontant, the first African American woman to serve as Deputy Solicitor General of the United States; Julia Cooper Mack, the first African American woman to serve on the D. C. Court of Appeals; and Norma Holloway Johnson, the only African American female to serve as a Federal judge on the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia, to name a few. While the ranks of African American female lawyers have grown, many are still scratching at the Plexiglas ceiling. If the ides of March are approaching, then Law Day 2012 cannot be far behind. Get ready for a sensational Law Day program where we will honor not one, but two phenomenal members of the WBA community: The Honorable Inez Smith Reid, Senior Judge, D. C. Court of Appeal, and Wade Henderson, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. But before we get there, there are matters of concern to be addressed. -- (Read More...) |
|