Editorial | Ramona P. DeSalvo
A Century of Women in the Legal Profession A century seems like a very long time. It feels implausible that women in the legal profession were quite rare one hundred years ago, and that those women known to us today as trailblazers in the law can often be found in our contacts, speaking on panels at conferences, or featured in current law articles. A historical perspective illustrates the nascent development of women in Tennessee law. In 1869, Arabella Babb Mansfield was the first woman admitted to the practice of law in the United States, despite Iowa’s prohibition against women taking the bar exam. After a court challenge, Iowa changed its licensing rules, becoming the first state to allow women and minorities bar admission; however, Mrs. Mansfield never practiced law, working as an educator and suffragist. Not quite 30 years later, the U. S. Supreme Court decided Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), affirming segregation as the law of the land. The Court held, “Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both races be equal one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.”1 The very next year, however, a Shelby County judge admitted the first African American female attorney, Lutie Lytle, to the Tennessee bar,2 and Lytle is reputed to be the first female law professor at Central Tennessee University in 1898. The first woman to actively engage in the practice of law in Tennessee was Marion Griffin, who lobbied
the General Assembly to remove the male only qualifier for bar admission. She was admitted to practice in 1907 by the Tennessee Supreme Court and in 1923, became the first woman to serve in the General Assembly.3 She was elected shortly after Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment that prohibited the denial of the right to vote on the basis of sex, effective August 26, 1920. While Marion Griffin forged ahead with her law practice, President Woodrow Wilson undid 50 years of post-Civil war reconstruction by instituting segregation in the federal government and screening D.W. Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation at the White House in 1915. Wilson, along with the film’s success, are credited with fueling the re-emergence of the Klu Klux Klan in the 1920s. Against this backdrop, Tennessee saw Judge Camille Kelley become the first female judge in 1920, serving in Shelby County Family Court despite never having been admitted to the bar. While women practiced law over the ensuing 75 years, it was not until 1978, more than 50 years after the 19th Amendment’s passage, that Nancy Sorak became the first elected female judge in Shelby County. Judge Julia Smith Gibbons was the first woman to serve on a state trial court, having been appointed by Governor Lamar Alexander in 1981.4 Chancellor Sharon Bell was elected in 1986 as the first female chancellor in the state and first female judge on a court of record in East Tennessee. It was not until 1990, some 93 years after Lutie Lytle was ad(continued on page 12)
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023 | NASHVILLE BAR JOURNAL
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