Celebrating Florida's First 150 Women Lawyers
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15 0 Celebrating Florida’s First 150 Women Lawyers - 15 0 - Celebrating Florida’s First 150 Women Lawyers Compiled & Edited by Wendy S. Loquasto First 150 Women Lawyers Committee The Florida Bar 650 Apalachee Parkway Tallahassee, Florida 32399-2300 (850) 561-5600 Florida Association for Women Lawyers 317 East Park Avenue Tallahassee, Florida 32301 Published by LEXIS Publishing 701 East Water Street Charlottesville, Virginia 22902 1-800-446-3410 Copyright © 2000 by The Florida Bar and Florida Association for Women Lawyers Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. Printed by LEXIS Publishingsm. ii Dedicated to Florida’s First 150 Women Lawyers We honor them for their strength, commitment and service to the legal profession and their communities. It is our wish that the story of their lives will inspire future generations to protect the advances they made for women and continue their efforts to improve the status of women in the legal profession. As Carrie Chapman Catt, founder of the League of Women Voters, once said: “What could be more appropriate than that women should do for coming generations what those of a preceding period did for them.” iii Acknowledgments Gathering and compiling the information contained in the biographies that appear in this book was an enormous task that could not have been accomplished without the assistance of the 86 researchers who have worked on this project. A debt of gratitude is also owed to the numerous members of The Florida Bar who responded to inquiries printed in The Florida Bar News and The Florida Bar Journal, cherished senior members of The Florida Bar who recalled memories of earlier times, and laypersons who learned of the project and volunteered information. Many thanks are also owed to the librarians, archivists and alumni office personnel of Florida’s law schools. Gail Grieb, Archivist at Stetson University’s duPont-Ball Library in DeLand, searched through school records and found numerous articles on Stetson’s early women graduates that had been in the “dead files.” She provided many of the photographs in the book from Stetson yearbooks. Cynthia Sikorski, Director of Alumni Relations at the University of Miami, and Jeannette Hausler, Associate Dean and Dean of Students, and Tica Stanton, Library Collection Developer, of the University of Miami School of Law Library, also searched records and yearbooks and provided similar information for Miami alumni. Professor Betty Taylor and Gail Sasnett, Associate Dean for Students, of the University of Florida Frederic Levin College of Law, and Rebecca “Becky” Hoover, formerly of the alumni office and presently Assistant Director of Development at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine, provided the information for Florida alumni. The First 150 Women Lawyers Project is greatly indebted to Judge Mattie Belle Davis, who has worked tirelessly compiling the history of the Florida Association for Women Lawyers (FAWL). She has been as- sisted in this enormous endeavor by long-time friend and lawyer Henrietta S. Biscoe (1961), as well as by Rebecca Bowles Hawkins (1935). Judge Davis graciously shared her historical text concerning many of Florida’s early women lawyers. Without the information Judge Davis provided, this book would have been incomplete. Her contribution to this celebration is immeasurable, and it is with much gratitude that The Florida Bar and FAWL acknowledge her efforts in documenting the history of Florida’s women lawyers. Thank you, Judge Mattie Belle Davis! Katy Thomas, Deputy Clerk at the Florida Supreme Court; Nancy Dobson, Executive Director of the Florida Supreme Court Historical Society; and Janet McPherson, Librarian at the First District Court of Appeal, also assisted in the gathering of information on these women. Thanks are also owed to those who proofread the text, which is a pleasure to read as a result of their efforts: Jennifer Coberly, Beverly Wood Gibson, Ellen B. Gwynn, Terry J. Hansen, Sharon McElrath, Peggy Perez, Andi Reynolds, Christi Sherouse, and Phillip Tomberlin, Jr. Lynn Brady, Staff Graphics Artist at The Florida Bar, must also be acknowledged. It was she who de- signed the wonderful cover for this book. She was also responsible for formatting the text and photographs. The fact that the book is a pleasure to see is owed entirely to her. Thanks to Ava Doppelt for her generous pro bono legal services for the copyright. An enormous debt is owed to LEXIS Publishing for printing 3,000 copies of this book, which ensures that the impressive history of Florida’s First 150 Women Lawyers can be shared with many others, including libraries around the state. Thanks to LEXIS employees Leigh Trippe, Director of Government Relations, and Diane Callahan, Association Marketing Manager, who made the printing possible. My thanks would not be complete without mentioning the First 150 Women Lawyers Committee, chaired by Edith G. Osman, and made up of Nina Ashenafi, Mary Ellen Clark, Beth Demme, Mary Jo Francis, Amy E. Furness, Judge Gill S. Freeman, Katherine A. Giddings, Sheila M. Gonzales, Rosana E. Hernan- dez, Allison Doliner Hockman, Lori J. Ketchledge, Judge Shelley J. Kravitz, Kathy J. Maus, Rebecca J. Mercier, Kelly A. O’Keefe, Michelle A. Pivar, Janeen L. Rivers, Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, K. Renee Schimkat, Jacqueline Hogan Scola, Christi H. Sherouse, Lea Souza-Rasile, Lori K. Weems, and Jodi L. Wilkof. This group of dynamic, dedicated, and seemingly tireless women have worked extraordinarily hard to plan, organize, and obtain underwriting for the May 25 dinner and June 14 supreme court ceremony which will honor Florida’s First 150 Women Lawyers. These women have also been a never-ending source of support to me during the production of this book. Thank you, ladies, and congratulations on jobs well done. Last, but certainly not least, many thanks to my husband, Terry J. Hansen, for his limitless support and understanding over the past year and a half while I have worked on the First 150 Project. Wendy S. Loquasto iv Table of Contents Preface: Awakening: A Celebration of The Florida Bar’s 50th Anniversary and of Florida’s First 150 Women Lawyers by Edith G. Osman ................................ vii The Quest for Professional Equality by Jeanmarie Whalen .........................................ix Introduction A History of America’s First Women Lawyers by Doris Weatherford ..........................xi Sufferage in Y1900, Women Lawyers at the Start of the Twentieth Century by Cynthia L. Cooper ................................................................................................... xiii Researching Florida’s First 150 Women Lawyers by Wendy S. Loquasto ...................xv Florida’s Law Schools, the Florida Supreme Court, and the First 150 Women Law- yers ........................................................................................................................................xix The Biographies of Florida’s First 150 Women Lawyers Abbreviations for Source Material ..............................................................................xxii List of Florida’s First 150 Women Lawyers By Year of Admission .......................... xxiii The Biographies ...............................................................................................................1 The Biographies of Florida’s First Five African-American Women Lawyers Introduction to Florida’s First Five African-American Women Lawyers by Evett L. Simmons ....................................................................................................105 The Biographies ...........................................................................................................106 Acknowledgment of the Research Committee .........................................................111 First 150 Women Lawyers Committees ......................................................................114 Acknowledgment of Underwriters ..............................................................................115 v Awakening: A Celebration of The Florida Bar’s 50th Anniversary and of Florida’s First 150 Women Lawyers By Edith G. Osman When people ask the living” when they became lawyers, but because me why busy law- their stories must be told to awaken women -- and yers devoted well men -- in the years to come. over a year to make When we began this project several young this day a reality, women suggested that we should not honor I tell them about “women lawyers” because we have “made it” Belva Lockwood. and there is no reason to “set us apart.” As the In 1873, Lockwood insightful piece by Doris Weatherford makes became the first clear, we may be well on our way, but we surely woman in America have not arrived; instead, if we are to fulfill the to complete law dreams of our future, we must truly appreciate school. After male our past. This project has been an important students threat- step in that process. ened to boycott graduation, the administration withheld her diploma until she wrote to the This year marks the 50th anniversary of The President of the University -- Ulysses S. Grant. Florida Bar, a unified bar which includes over After three years in practice, Lockwood applied 66,000 attorneys admitted to practice in Flor- to be admitted to the Bar of the United States ida. Although women now number 16,588 and Supreme Court. That Court refused her appli- constitute 27.4 percent of the Bar, less than 40 cation writing, “[N]one but men are admitted years ago, in 1966, there were only 175 women to practice