More than 100 years after Charlotte Ray became the first African American woman to graduate from a U.S. law school, challenges remain for Black women in the legal profession, panelists said at the webinar “Celebrating Trailblazing Black Women Lawyers,” sponsored by the American Bar Association Judicial Division in recognition of Women’s History Month.
Despite the lingering obstacles, Black women’s voices, expertise and experience are vital, particularly in today’s legal and political environment, they said.
“It is still necessary even today in 2025 … for Black women to practice law, for Black women to represent individuals, for Black women to represent corporations, for Black women to represent the government, for Black women to be judges,” said retired district associate judge Romonda D. Belcher of Iowa’s 5th Judicial District.
“We have a voice. We have perspectives, we have life experiences,” Belcher continued. “We have, of course, the knowledge and education everybody else has, but those things that distinguish us make a difference.”
Paulette Brown, the first woman of color to become president of the American Bar Association and a former president of the National Bar Association, joined Belcher on the panel and was one of the three pioneering Black women lawyers recognized in the webinar. She and Belcher shared their path to becoming lawyers — describing their inspirations, determination and hard work to make it in a field that has not always been welcoming to Black women — and discussed the influence that Ray and another lesser-known Black woman lawyer, Gertrude Rush, have had on the profession.
Born in 1850, Ray was the first Black woman to take and pass the bar exam in Washington D.C., in 1872, after graduating from Howard University School of Law. She was the first Black woman to practice law in the U.S.
Rush became a lawyer in 1918 after she studied the law in her husband’s law office and passed the Iowa bar exam. Along with four Black male Iowa lawyers, she founded the National Bar Association in 1925.
Rush had a long legal career, was actively involved in the community and was sometimes known as a “Sunday school lawyer because she practiced the Golden Rule — ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,’” Belcher said.
The “paltry” number of Black women lawyers versus white lawyers in general confirms “that there is obviously a very strong need for more Black women lawyers in the profession,” Brown said. “I think that’s exactly what Charlotte Ray and Gertrude Rush would say — that we cannot be deterred, and we should be encouraged and talking to our young people about going to law school and pursuing careers in law,” especially now, she said.
“It is so important to have an understanding of what is law and what is not law, what is constitutionally valid and what is not constitutionally valid, and what constitutes a democracy and what does not,” Brown said. “A legal education trains you to think in that way and we need more people like Charlotte Ray and Gertrude Rush who will stand up for those beliefs so that we will not go back and that we’ll only advance.”
Marcella A. Holland, senior judge on the Baltimore City Circuit Court, moderated the session.
(https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2025/03/program-honors-black-women-lawyers/)
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