This year passed a milestone for law schools. For the first time, women make up a majority of law students with just over 50 percent of the seats at accredited law schools in the United States. It is a particularly poignant moment for those of us at George Washington Law School where Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood graduated and ultimately became not only one of the very first female lawyers in the United States but the first woman admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court. The incoming class owes a debt of gratitude to pioneers like Lockwood who bravely fought entrenched discrimination and ignorance to reach this incredible moment in history.
This is believed to be the first time that the number of women has surpassed the number of men in law school with currently 55,766 women in law school nationwide as opposed to 55,059 men. In the first-year, there are now more than 51 percent women, or 19,032, and 48.6 percent men, or 18,058.
Our story involving Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood is not an entirely redeeming. In 1870 Lockwood applied to the Columbian Law School in the District of Columbia, but was denied entry. She and other women then learned about the new National University Law School (now the George Washington University Law School). To the school’s lasting honor, it admitted Lockwood and there other women. However, in 1873, the law school withheld her diploma. It took a year, but Lockwood wrote to the President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, as president ex officio of the National University Law School. In September 1873, after only a week of Grant receiving her letter, Lockwood received her diploma. At 43, Lockwood was now a lawyer but, even after the District of Columbia bar admitted her, she faced open discrimination. She was denied admission to the Supreme Court based on her gender. She fought for admission and won. In 1880, Lockwood became the first woman lawyer to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court with Kaiser v. Stickney and later United States v. Cherokee Nation.
Lockwood would later show how important it is for those who prevail over discrimination to help those who still struggle against it. She sponsored Samuel R. Lowery to the Supreme Court bar and he would later become the first African American to argue a case before the court. Lowery’s admission as the fifth African American in the Supreme Court bar was captured in this picture.
So on this historic date, it is important to reflect upon all of those pioneers like Lockwood who refused to yield to prejudice and ignorance and fought for equal rights. It is also equally important to remember the continuing struggle of women in Saudi Arabia and other countries where they are denied rights that even Lockwood had in the nineteenth century before her struggle for equality.
Great article. It’s really crazy how far women have come in this country. I’m currently in law school and it’s pretty much half women. I recently started a blog about my law school experience check it out.
Talesofanaspiringlawyer.com
this is great maybe we can get women up to 60% and make things even more equal. women dont have to work as garbage men though cause that would be unequal.
I don’t applaud any identity group “accomplishment.” I find it demeaning and disingenuous for the person who actually did it. A person’ s own merit and determination determines destiny as Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood’s story amply proves. Likewise, I don’t make normative comments on so-called “identity groups.” Each lawyer is different and merits their own analysis. Like the great barrister, Sir Edmund Burke, “I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people,” nor even a valentine for one.
There is nothing demeaning or disingenuous about acknowledging trailblazers. Yes. Trailblazers. Those brave, fearless and courageous individuals who, despite the tremendous odds stacked against them, succeeded in becoming the first to accomplish something which had previously been considered impossible. Paying homage to those who endured and persevered in the multiple battles and struggles to simply attend law school, receive a degree and practice in the legal profession is far from demeaning or disingenuous. Actually, it’s demeaning and disingenuous to steadfastly fail or refuse to acknowledge and honor the people who paved the way for the freedoms and rights that we enjoy today.
bam bam:
The people who “paved the way” are the ones who admitted her to the bar. They never get credit because of course they’re members of the wrong “identity group.”
Those who, reluctantly, after much pressure and struggle, eventually admitted her into law school, granted her a diploma and permitted her to practice in her chosen field, are also a factor in this, as well. No doubt about it. They, however, did not act as the impetus to pave the way for progress. They were, undoubtedly, the players who finally succumbed to said pressure and struggle by finally allowing Belva to pursue her dreams. Sure, they were factors in these historical events. Who said that they weren’t? But for people like Belva, who were willing to endure societal ridicule and immense resistance, progress would never have been achieved. Those, who finally acquiesced, did so only after a great struggle and prolonged battles. Their hands were forced, so to speak. Should we acknowledge them? Of course. Why not? Belva, however, was the grain of sand. The irritant which, eventually, caused the pearl to form.
Oh spare me the hearts and flowers. If the powers that be don’t admit her, she’s paralegal Belva. Change takes an agent and the person who actually changes things. You give too much credit to the former and not enough to the latter.
Branch Rickey.
Case in point.
Everett Dirksen
What about a person who drafts the legislation that required qualified women be admitted to the Supreme Court Bar, and spends years pressuring legislators to get it passed.
That’s good work as well. Not historic, but good. I said she did good work later.
Ah, alas–and God said that it was good.
No, that was me but hey, if you think so, that’s great. It’s in accord with your sentimental bent, but who am I to turn down a compliment.
But for people like Belva, who were willing to endure societal ridicule and immense resistance,
What ‘immense resistance’? She tangled with the law school’s officialdom. Turley’s account does not say what their complaint was or if it applied to the other three women taking courses there. She wrote one letter to get them to relent and they did. One interesting point: at the time, it was the mode to study law in office apprenticeships (“read law”) and take the bar after two years as a clerk. She almost certainly did not need the degree to take the exam. She was admitted to the local bar, but not the Supreme Court bar. I think most lawyers don’t bother seeking admission to the federal courts at all, much less the Supreme Court (though it may have been more practical to seek admission thereto at that time and place).
The woman had obstacles, but you’re speaking of them in stupidly florid language.
Give it a rest. She applied to law school, attended law school, and was admitted to the bar. That took brains and perseverence, though it was fairly normal among (unremembered and unlamented) working politicians of the era. There weren’t ‘tremendous odds’ ‘stacked against her’. You’re yapping like she traveled to the south pole on a dog sled.
Learn to read. She was denied a diploma. Had to fight to even RECEIVE her diploma, which she earned. Denied the ability to argue before the Supreme Court. Had to fight for that, as well. Perhaps it is of little significance to you. Perhaps her tribulations have no obvious impact on your life. Or, so it seems. An intelligent individual, however, should be capable of understanding her enduring impact. Obviously, not.
She was denied a diploma. Had to fight to even RECEIVE her diploma, which she earned.
Again, the circumstances regarding her conflicts with the school are not given in detail.
The vast majority of lawyers get from one end of their career to another without arguing before the federal Supreme Court. It may have been a great deal more common among the DC bar of that era, but you certainly didn’t need to be admitted to the Supreme Court bar to make a living in law. As we speak, pleadings even to state courts of last resort are pretty unusual in the lives of most lawyers.
Your whole shtick is feigned outrage that someone thwarted a member of your preferred mascot group and failed to give her due deference. Well, that happens to people in the course of life. It’s not that consequential.
You really need to hook up with mespo. The ignorance, contained in that one room, would be blinding. You could both engage in a b@tchfest, where those, deserving of honor and respect, are summarily dismissed and scorned as unworthy of said honor and respect. Wow. I can only imagine the offspring. Frightening, to say the least.
Like I said, testy when challenged.
The term ‘ignorance’ does not mean what you fancy it means.
I’ve told you that this woman’s life does not have the significance you invest it with and that you’ve characterized her problems with absurd language. If I’m wrong, you’ve not offered one suggestion of an argument that I’m wrong because of a deficit of information. (And no, your shrill assertions are not arguments).
Have the country doctor, in your two-horse town, adjust your meds. You ain’t firing on all fours, as the old timers would say. Maybe Ethel and Bertha, at the next quilting bee, can tell you what they take. Lady pills–my guess.
I love a good ad hominem but from a lawyer it looks … well … stupid. Couple that with a total lack of factual argument and Im looking at a pretty easy mark litigation-wise.
Coming from someone like you, who has an unresolved God-complex, your comment is particularly comical.
You wouldn’t want to go against me in court, sonny. I’d have you for breakfast.
Glad to see your branching out from law to remote medical diagnosis. You do have a certain seer quality to you. Plus, it’s about the same quality of work but much more humerus. (pun intended). I’m game for court. Let’s tee it up sometime, grammie.
The Supreme Court heard appeals from the local courts in D.C. at that time. Her first Supreme Court argument was simply the normal continuation of the representation of client she represented at the trial level.
Richard, save your energy. There’s no fixing stupid.
Of course, it was. She did get a tidy $5 mil from the government for the Cherokees so it was an important case.
Appellate jurisdiction for the JP courts in DC was vested in the District Court for the District of Columbia, which also had original jurisdiction similar to federal district and circuit courts elsewhere.
This is the kind of attitude that gives comfort and shelter to discrimination on the basis of such things as race, gender, age, etc., etc.
Mind you I am not saying you are a racist, a sexist, an ageist or any other kind if “ist.” Don’t know you well enough to make any such determinations. What I am saying is that it is this refusal to see these things about other people that helps clear a path for discrimination and permit its perpetuation.
What exactly is the refusal to see things? The refusal to accept gushing sentimentality over unrefuted facts? The refusal to equate an historical footnote with Martin Luther King? The refusal to suffer a fool gladly? Take your pick ’cause I’m guilty of all three. I’m won’t call you a fool because I don’t know you well enough but I will say your refusal to see these things helps clear a path for them.
Women earned majority of doctoral degrees in 2015 for 7th straight year and outnumber men in grad school 135 to 100:
https://www.aei.org/publication/women-earned-majority-of-doctoral-degrees-in-2015-for-7th-straight-year-and-outnumber-men-in-grad-school-134-to-100/
Men have been known to fake their educational resumes and employers overlook it because they prefer to hire men.
Yeah, women never lie.
Must you always bring up “Jackie” and Rolling Stone? 😀
1. Discrimination against men (even abuse of young men) is policy in higher education.
2. As of the 2013/14 Academic year, women awarded professional or research doctorates formed the majority in the following fields:
Optometry
Pharmacy
Veterinary Medicine
Teacher-training (Ed.D)
Humanities
Life Sciences
Social science / Psychology
It’s an occupation which is crucially dependent on verbalization and where the labor market is sorted by formal schooling more than any other bar academe. This is no surprise. Now, the rest of the story: if you assume (given career switching and burnout) that a typical legal career is 26 years in duration, the profession could be staffed with 26,000 bar admissions per year. Problem: there are currently 45,000 JD degrees awarded per year now and 4,000 LLB degrees. About 92% or thereabouts will pass the bar, though some will require several attempts. You’ve got a hopeless glut of entrants each year and nearly half will have to pay off their student loans with whatever sort of employment they’ll be able to land. BTW, once upon a time you could take the bar exam after an office apprenticeship and you could also attend law school without a baccalaureate degree. The former is now rare as hen’s teeth and the latter not common. So, you have this huge entrance toll and then a traffic pileup once you’re past the booth.
I have a relation who is a lawyer married to a physician. Or she was at one time. She burned out and is now in a completely unrelated line of work. I know another one-time lawyer who now works as a librarian (in college and school settings; she hasn’t been a law librarian in 15 years). This is more common among women who enter demanding professions than is commonly acknowledged and may be the mode in engineering. My wager is that a majority of these young women will not spend more than a modest run of years as working lawyers. Michelle Obama allowed her law license to lapse just 4 years after she was admitted (to be fair, her husband spent even less time working in law offices).
Among my mother’s contemporaries (and certainly my grandmother’), the assumption was that professional women were celibates. My mother had quite a number of lady teachers in college, but hardly any of them had husbands. She knew two lady physicians at the time, both women married to other doctors. One was childless and one quit practicing in 1958 when the demands on her time grew too taxing. The lady lawyer in the firm our family used, a woman admitted to the bar in 1928 after an office apprenticeship, was a childless spinster.
Your observations on female attorneys matches my own.
Who the f, in 2016, still refers to LADY TEACHERS, LADY PHYSICIANS, LADY LAWYERS AND CHILDLESS SPINSTERS? What planet do you inhabit?
How truly bizarre. No wonder how someone, who employs a vocabulary, using these antiquated and outdated terms, chastises me for viewing this woman, Belva, as an unsung hero. Get with the program, Lady Commentator. Or, as Jerry Lewis used to scream. . .L-A-Y-D-E-E-E,-E.
Bam, My analysis gives Susan a break. Here’s my take. Firstly, like yourself, Susan is a sharp lady. Just kidding, sharp WOMAN. Take note earlier in Susan’s good comment, when speaking about contemporary scenarios, Susan uses “women.” In the last paragraph, when relating experiences back in the day, Susan uses the vernacular of her mom and grandma in speaking of “lady” lawyers and docs.
Like myself, you can be combative, bam. I like that.
Nick
The last time that I heard the term, LADY LAWYER, was while I was walking in the heart of the city, by the courthouse, on my way to a court date. The court is directly across the street from a park, where the homeless and inebriated tend to gather. While I was walking on the sidewalk, adjacent to the park, an elderly homeless individual, three sheets to the wind, approached me. What did he want to know? He had to ask–ARE YOU A LAWYER LADY? Forgive me for somehow believing that contributors, to this blog, were well beyond that level. Like you said, never assume.
I’m not interested in your arbitrary opinions of my diction.
Pity you a shrew.
Lol!
PITY YOU A SHREW. What? No Lady Shrew? Gotta love the way an illiterate attempts to feebly express outrage. Nice try, old timer. Time to go and churn some butter and weave your own fabric. Your ridiculous choice of odd wording defines your antiquated physical and mental state. Tell me, did you know President Wilson? I hear that all the girls thought that he was the bee’s knees.
bam bam – only women can be shrews.
Well, I gave it a shot. But sometimes, bucks gotta buck up and sometimes cats gotta fight. You’re both smart women. So, no kidney punches, no shots below the belt, break when told to, and go to your corners when you hear the bell.
I’m still scratching my head at Toads’ attempt at making a point. Along the same lines, I’ll add that with women surpassing men in law school admissions, it just goes to show how much better looking the female applicants have become. How many lonely administrators are going to turn down a Megan Kelly look-alike as an applicant?
We must stop reverse-gender discrimination. How else will men dominate women in the white-collar workplace, which manifests itself in women’s tweets about white males?
Teacher, teacher, I declare: I can see your underwear.
—
–statement to women teachers back in the 1950s.
http://abovethelaw.com/2016/12/conservative-partners-give-female-associates-smaller-bonuses/ Pay inequality is still a major issue for female attorneys.
It’s only an issue if they actually deserve a raise.
When I started working in our judicial system back in the mid 70’s, men dominated the legal profession. One of the venues for the wave of new female attorneys was working as prosecutors. So, I worked w/ many women attorneys and found them mostly refreshing. But, over the past 40 years, as female numbers increased, I could see they were being co-opted. They did not provide the balance their sex should have. Conversely, the medical profession had the same dramatic influx of female docs. The female influence has been profound and positive.
There are other professions that have been transformed in my lifetime. The teaching profession was more balanced between men and women back in the 50’s/60’s. Now it is dominated by women and that has not been good. Finally, the formerly female dominated nursing profession is currently being transformed. Women still dominate, but men are creeping up in numbers. The jury is still out. Balance, in all aspects of life, is key to happiness.
Men don’t belong in nursing school. Women don’t belong in seminaries, or in the military bar in niche specialties, or in the police, or in the security trade.
My sister who was a teacher for 40 years, commented that male teachers tended to be more creative, more original in making learning fun for kids. That was also generally true of the male teachers I had, although a few of them were total morons.
The men employed on the faculty at my elementary school while I was there consisted of one administrator (who was a votary of fatuous pedagogic methods), several athletic coaches, a trio of music teachers of dubious quality, a pair of art teachers of dubious quality, a third grade teacher of dubious quality, and a chap who taught 6th grade. The coaches, that 6th grade teacher, one music teacher (arguably), and one art teacher (arguably) were the only ones among them who had much business working as elementary teachers at all (another music teacher might have done passably at the secondary level but lacked the patience for young children). I understand one of the coaches went into nursing home administration and that 6th grade teacher went into secondary school teaching and then into administration. Elementary schools are just no country for young men, old men, or men in between.
DSS;
I’m loving the vocabulary you employ as well as the sentence structure. “Votary” and “fatuous,” are just fabulous words, and the parentheticals “arguably” is just chuckle-worthy. Please keep writing, it’s a pleasure to read a talented writer.
Nick –“Now it is dominated by women and that has not been good.”
Once again opinion that you seem to expect everyone to accept as established fact. Here is a challenge: for a change how about you actually follow up a claim with an actual evidence-based argument.
I was a teacher for 20-plus years. Many of my teaching colleagues were women. They were as qualified and dedicated and proficient at the teaching craft as any of the men with whom I also worked. Now of course I know this is anecdotal. But given that your claim was accompanied by nothing of substance, at this point all that is required to refute it is anecdotal information. And it should resonate with you since you said in some earlier comment somewhere that you appreciate people’s comments that are based on real experience. Well 22 years in a high school classroom, working with many female teachers, qualifies are real experience.
Various studies indicate that men dominate the top of the scale for creativity, innovation, invention. They also dominate the bottom, in prison, homeless, alcoholism, depravity and degeneracy. Women fill out the middle of the scale. That women are better at reading and writing suggests that they would also be better at understanding and describing legal issues, and also at the nurturing nature of practicing medicine. Men would be expected to excel at rocket science. All of that may be cultural. Gender is disappearing as a determinant of cultural norms.
This is not a surprise because more girls than boys are graduating from high school and that cohort would continue through college.
I believe about 57% of the baccalaureate degrees are awarded to women. The thing is, when you look at the subjects wherein the share of women awarded degrees exceeds their share of the working population, what you see is that the subjects in which you have a large overhang of women tend to be occupational degree programs for school teaching, social work, nursing, and the like; the humanities; the visual and performing arts; biology; psychology; and the genus ‘social science’ (curiously, history, which is enumerated by federal statisticians separately from ‘social science’, has a male majority; I’d bet serious money that, among the students in ‘social science’, young men are a comfortable majority in economics and young women everywhere else). These subjects account for all the imbalance. The thing is, biology, economics, and the natural science wing of psychology aside, all the foregoing are impractical degrees or practical only for occupations which have been dominated by women for generations. The baccalaureate degree in these cases is a signal to the job market indicating trainability. It’s a passable inference that the men’s labor market is sorted somewhat differently than the women’s market, and that a larger share of men navigating the market have no real use for these sorts of credentials to land the sort of jobs they are seeking. Even allowing for a retreat from the labor market to take care of pre-school children, men form the majority of the working population and form a majority in every age group bar those under 20 (where women have the slimmest of advantages). Men account for about 2/3 of all managers (and, keep in mind, they typical male manager nowadays entered the labor force ca. 1990, when recruits to entry level management would have been split 50-50).
Oh, what to do with my womyn’s studies degree and a minor in diaspora studies with an emphasis on LGBT issues?
Per the Digest of Education Statistics, 0.44% of all baccalaureate degrees awarded are in areal studies, group studies &c. The victimology programs are a subset of that. You could get rid of them all and you’d inconvenience very few students. As disciplines, they’re spurious. Colleges have such programs for status-signaling among peer groups. Scroom.
You could do that but if you don’t the market will do it for you with much less fuss and wringing of radical hands.
BTW, I love that word “areal.” Looks like a typo but it’s not!! 😀
There are way too many lawyers. Too many– dumbs down the so called profession. Women are called “bitches”. There is another aspect of that word. Bitches rant and complain and dominate by their words. Women want to run the show, run the house, run the farm, run the factory, run the cathouse…
As a man, there is only one thing they are good for and that is not bitching. I used to work in a cathouse as a room cleaner. I got “paid in trade” for the first few days.
lol…just what the US needs…more attorneys…pretty soon there will be only one activity in the US – litigation. Maybe they could train attorneys to be paramedics so they wouldn’t have to chase ambulances, they could have people signing forms and doing a lot of the initial paperwork while they care for them in the ambulance. …oops, I probably just gave some of you an idea…damn…
“Over 70% of the world’s lawyers live in the U.S.
The U.S. has over 900,000 lawyers!
That’s one lawyer for every 300 Americans.
Washington D.C. boasts 1 lawyer for every 22 people!
Arguments against lawyers:
They redistribute wealth without producing anything, therefore they are a drain on our economy. (Coblentz, 83)
Many talented people end up being lawyers when they could have done something useful with their lives. (Bok, 93)”
http://homepages.rpi.edu/~verwyc/Chap4law.htm
Actually since women more likely to have college degree than men, outnumbering men in law school is not surprising.
This is the stuff women bring to law
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4043394/First-ze-Mr-Mrs-BANNED-Oxford-University-tells-colleges-remove-gender-specific-titles.html
Well if there is one thing women love to do, that is argue…
and thats because they are all crazy as hell. We all know it. Lets stop pretending they arent. Women are certifiable. I used to be a good little Social Justice Warrior and praised feminism. Now the older I get the more I understand the wisdom of thousands of years of misogyny.
Yeah yeah call me a male chauvinist. I just dont care anymore. Women are nuts. They are superior parents and more caring and helpful to people but they are all mental. They generally make terrible bosses and should never be President. Many older women will actually admit it too.
Mr. Ed — “Yeah yeah call me a male chauvinist.”
Ok, I will be more than happy to oblige you. You’re a chauvinist. Of course you are actually a lot worse than this but I’ll refrain from calling you the many other things you are as well.
Let’s dwell on the present, not the past. This means not patting ourselves on the back without looking at the totality of the facts.
If you want to look at the top 14, top 25, top 50 or even top 100 law schools and roll out the male to female ratios that is great. But don’t rely on numbers from law schools that shouldn’t be open. Large numbers of women at, e.g., Florida Coastal or some such numb-nuts operation should not be balancing numbers at Stanford or Northwestern.
God bless Belva, whose bravery, tenacity, courage and determination paved the way for women, around the world, entering the field of law. Not only that, from the photo, she was, undoubtedly, one handsome woman who could, simultaneously, rock a vest and a bun. No easy accomplishment.
Belva acted in her own self interest exclusively. MLK did it for a whole people. There is no comparison between the two motivations.
Tell that to the women now attending and graduating from law school in record numbers. Did you know Belva, personally, to attest to her motivations? Very odd for you to surmise what motivated a stranger more than 100 years ago. You don’t have a clue. The bottom line is that her personal battles, regardless of whether her actions were altruistic, have resulted in women obtaining a right which had been previously been denied them. If you want to talk numbers–since that seems to impress you– women constitute half of the population. Half of society. If she gained the freedom for half of the population, and MLK, in contrast, did so for only a fraction of that, who is more praiseworthy? You want to turn this into an “either” “or” situation. Why aren’t they both praiseworthy? You are one strange duck.
It’s like you opining on the “pressure”received by the powers that were and/or their motivations for change. Just an educated guess. What isn’t in dispute is the MLK lead a movement, Belva led a job search. You’re easily impressed.
Do you even comprehend the term “struggle” or the word “fight” to any degree? It was only after a protracted struggle, fight and, yes, pressure, that those in power finally, reluctantly, granted Belva her demands. Far from being easily impressed, I was, instead, raised to truly appreciate, value and recognize those who preceded us. To grasp that my life, today, would be vastly different had it not been for Belva, and countless others, who endured persecution, ridicule and, even death, to secure rights and freedoms that we blindly accept as normal and expected. A lesson that you, quite obviously, never received. Pity. It’s a valuable one. Unfortunately, you don’t comprehend the need to remember those who made it possible for us to live our lives, as we do today, with the abundance of freedoms and rights once only reserved for a few. Perhaps you could learn to adopt an attitude of gratitude. Santa hears all wishes.
Struggle is trying to get out of a bear trap. Belva complained loudly and incessantly and then got into a school already dedicated to admitting women in 1871. National University Law School, GW’s predecessor school, had already decided to admit women before she applied in 1871. That’s not struggling, that’s talking and writing and losing and then finding a school that would accept you. Thus, the school officials deserve the credit for the pioneering work and Belva deserves the credit for applying. I have no idea what you were “taught”; likewise you have little idea of what I was “taught” so spare me the false pity. You do realize I suppose that I like realists, true facts and deplore purple prose as well as lavish, undeserved sentiment in service to some ill-defined ideology. And if you “truly appreciate, value and recognize those who preceded us,” that would mean the credit goes to the faculty of the admitting school. Personally, I appreciate folks who make good change for everyone (the faculty) not those who merely demand it for themselves (Belva). I never saw Belva’s name anywhere before today. She wasn’t the first female lawyer; that was Arabella Mansfield, who was practicing law in Iowa before Belva ever took her first Torts exam. To her credit though, Belva worked for women’s rights — later — and was a darn good personal injury lawyer winning $5 million in tax dollars for the Cherokees who were owed the debt. Belva’s not a pioneer but she walk a pioneer’s trail.
You still don’t get it and never will. Double down on the idiocy. It’s quite telling.
bambam:
You’re right. I live in the fact-based world and you like in the rainbows and lollipop one. Refute the facts or admit it’s all about sentiment for you.
Acknowledging those who fought to alter the status quo in a positive and meaningful way and impart change, which would impact generations to come, is valuable. There is meaning behind that. It’s called gratitude. Appreciation. Acknowledgment. You can equate those seemingly foreign concepts that with unicorns, rainbows and lollipops all that you wish. Again, it goes back to the manner in which one is raised. If one is not raised to comprehend that we enjoy privileges and freedoms which were only obtained through the blood, sweat and tears of our ancestors, then nothing that I can relay to you, in this venue, will make any sort of a difference. To you, Belva, is a self-serving and self-interested individual, whose efforts were of little consequence to anyone other than herself. Good luck with that.
What “fight” is there when the school admits woman already? Answer: none. The status quo was already altered! Does Bob Gibson get credit for breaking the color line in MLB when Jackie Robinson did it12 years before? Belva’s a minor figure in the civil rights movement, hence her anonymity. Why are the facts so hard to accept? ‘Cause you don’t like ’em?
BTW, I’m sure that almost every women attending anything academic has no idea who Belva was with the possible exception of the GW law school.
The fact that society hasn’t chosen to make her name familiar to all schoolchildren–where time is devoted to discussing those who impacted the freedoms that we enjoy today–doesn’t influence or diminish her enormous impact on society. So, because she doesn’t have name recognition, she is not of great importance? If those attending school are unfamiliar with her name, that says what? Most schoolchildren can’t name more than a few countries on the map. According to your way of thinking, those same countries have no merit because geography is no longer taught in school. Brilliant.
Testy when challenged I see. Of course, it could be because she’s a minor figure who didn’t deserve it. All are possibilities. As for kids not naming countries on a map, I suppose that has more to do with their teachers than their curriculum which assuredly includes them. Newsflash: Not everyone who agrees with you is newsworthy or even that important. Sorry.
Yes. You are sorry.
And you’re rude, but that doesn’t advance the argument.
If I told Belva that you believed that she was only interested in promoting herself and cared little or nothing about helping those who followed in her footsteps, she’d call you more than just rude. And, she’d be correct.
Belva’s dead. She wouldn’t say anything.
Yes, she is no longer living, but her actions and victories continue to live on. I know. You don’t agree, however, if she could, she’d probably tell us that she, singlehandedly, managed to accomplish more in her lifetime to advance the rights and freedoms of others than you could hope to accomplish if you were granted ten lifetimes. She’d also probably state that it is those with inferiority complexes–so insecure in their own accomplishments–who refuse to acknowledge or respect the accomplishments of others. She’d be correct, on both accounts.
That’s right don’t deal with the facts. Platitudes and silly attacks on your opponent make you feel better. Carry on.
bam bam. North of 40,000 people are admitted to the bar every year. There are over 600,000 people practicing law in this country right now. Only a modest minority of people have the chops for this, but it’s common enough that the biography of one lawyer is not all that engaging, much less a necessary addition to the history books.
She’s not that important. She’s a human interest story. History instruction is not devoid of them (and they go in and out of fashion. William F. Buckley, who was in high school ca. 1940, once sent a fuddled memo to a staff member which asked, “who is this Harriet Tubman and why have I never heard of her?”).