Lutie Lytle: Pioneer in the Law

Lutie Lytle: Pioneer in the Law

Tennessee has the distinction of licensing the first African American woman lawyer in the South, and just the third in the United States. Lutie Lytle was born in 1875 in Murfreesboro to formerly enslaved parents. The Lytles were part of the “Exoduster” movement of formerly enslaved African Americans moving to Kansas from the South because of the broken promises of Reconstruction. After the Civil War, Middle Tennessee had groups of armed, masked people terrorizing the newly-freed population and destroying their property. But the State of Kansas was seen as a place that was friendly to African Americans in the areas of education and business. The entire Lytle family moved to Topeka, Kansas, in 1879.

Lytle excelled in the Topeka schools and was known as one of the best students in the city. She earned perfect grades in the classroom and was well known in the community. Her father, a barber and businessman, was one of the wealthiest African Americans in Topeka.

In 1891, while attending Topeka High School, where African American and White students were taught together, Lytle worked as a writer and editor for three African American newspapers where she was exposed to politicians and the legislature. This led to her being offered a job in the Kansas State Legislature as an Assistant Engrossing Clerk. People in Kansas praised Lytle’s writing and public speaking skills.

After graduation, Lytle left Topeka and returned to Tennessee where she taught at an African American Public School in Chattanooga. Lytle was accepted as a student at Central Tennessee College Law School, a Nashville institution started after the Civil War as the first law school for African Americans in the South.

At Central Tennessee College, Lytle excelled and graduated as class valedictorian. In the 1890s, before Tennessee required a written bar examination, law school graduates had to complete a two-step process to become a lawyer. First, an individual had to apply for a certificate from a local court proving the applicant is 21 years old and of good moral character. Then a sitting judge had to license the applicant.

Lytle obtained the required certificate, but she could not get a license from a Davidson County Court. In Nashville, Judge J. M. Anderson denied Lytle a license to practice law, ruling that a woman should not be a lawyer in Tennessee because the Tennessee Supreme Court did not allow women to become a Notary Public.

Lytle did not give up on her dream of becoming a lawyer. She travelled to Memphis with her two sponsors to see if a court in Memphis would give her a license to practice law as she met all of the standards and was a graduate of a state-recognized law school. Her two African American attorney sponsors were Josiah T. Settle, a graduate of Howard University Law School, and A.B. Saddler who attended law school with Lytle at Central Tennessee College. Having Settle, himself a trailblazer, make the motion carried great weight in Memphis—in 1887, he had been appointed as Assistant Attorney General for Shelby County.

On September 8, 1897, the Memphis courtroom of Criminal Court Judge Lunsford P. Cooper was packed with onlookers and spectators to see if the court would admit Lytle to the bar. Newspaper accounts noted everyone was so “spellbound a pin could have been heard to drop in the farthest part of the large courtroom.” Attorney Sadler, touting Lytle’s qualifications as an orator and writer, stated she was an “independent thinker and speaker of rare ability.” Judge Cooper approved the motion for Lytle, and she became Tennessee’s first woman lawyer and the first African American woman lawyer in the South.

Judge Cooper wanted the newly licensed Lytle to begin her legal career in his courtroom and asked her to stay and represent a defendant who did not have a lawyer. Lytle politely turned down her first potential client because she had to return home.

Lytle set another first in the legal profession when she returned to Kansas and became the first woman lawyer in Kansas in 1897. She also explored options for moving to another state as a young woman lawyer during a time when there were very few in the entire United States.

The following year, Lytle returned to Nashville and became a professor at Central Tennessee College. She taught real property, evidence, domestic relations, criminal law, and criminal procedure. This appointment also was historic, as Lytle became the first woman law professor in the United States.

In 1900, Lytle briefly practiced law in Memphis. The following year she married a lawyer named Alfred C. Cowan, and the couple moved to New York City where Cowan practiced law. In 1913, Lytle and Cowan attended the National Negro Bar Association Convention in Philadelphia. Lytle was the first African American woman lawyer to attend a bar convention and the first spouse of a lawyer to attend the convention as an equal member.

Lytle took over a legal matter in the U.S. Circuit Court after her husband’s death and won the case with a $9,000 verdict. Lytle remarried and kept her law firm in New York, where she continued to be active in politics and women’s issues in the northeast for the next few decades. Lytle died on November 12, 1955, and her legacy continues as a trailblazing woman lawyer and law professor.

The Historical Committee of the Nashville Bar Association has commissioned a plaque in honor of Lutie Lytle to be placed on the first floor of the Justice A.A. Birch Courthouse later this year. The Nashville Bar Foundation is accepting contributions to fund this important recognition of Attorney Lutie Lytle.

DAVID EWING is a ninth generation Nashvillian and Historian. He can be contacted at Nashville1779@gmail.com