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The Equity Club (1886 – 1890) was a correspondence club of professional women lawyers and law students. It was the first national organization of female lawyers in the United States.[1][2]
It was established in 1886 by graduates and students of the University of Michigan, when there were just over two hundred female lawyers in the country. Letitia Burlingame, Martha Pearce, and Margaret Wilcox invited over the six other female students associated with the University of Michigan Law School on October 6, 1886, for a reception to welcome the new female law students and created the Equity Club.[1] Burlingame was appointed president and Pearce was the corresponding secretary.[2] The club name was inspired by a professor of equity at the law school, Harry Burns Hutchins, who said, "Equity has been the savior of women".[3]
The club stated its mission in its constitution as aiming to "promote acquaintance among women pursuing law as a study or a profession... and to take such steps as may seem advisable to secure the success and usefulness of women in the profession".[4]
Motto: All the Allies of Each
Membership was open to all female law student and lawyers, whether or not they were practicing, as long as they sent an annual letter and an annual fee of two dollars.[1] These letters were collected into a book by Pearce into the Equity Club Annual which was circulated throughout the club.
The founders sent letters to sixty-two women, inviting them to join, and received responses from sixteen women. In total, there were thirty-two Equity Club members who lived all across the United States as well as in England, France, and Switzerland.[1]
At a meeting in Ann Arbor, the local club members
attempted to address the issue by discussing the question, "What is
our Duty as Women Lawyers in Society?"
Some members of the Equity Club, including Emma Gillett and Catharine Waugh McCulloch, formed a subcommittee to discuss how female attorneys should interact with the accepted bar associations.[5]
Pearce managed all the enquiries and
correspondence for the club, but after four years she resigned as corresponding secretary, explaining that she could no longer keep up with
all the responsibility. Since none of the other Equity Club members
volunteered to take her place, the Equity Club disbanded in 1890
Cora Benneson, Laura de Force Gordon, Belva Lockwood, Leoni Lonnsbury, Ellen Martin, Emma Gillett, Catharine Waugh McCulloch, Sara Killgore Wertman, Lelia Robinson, Ada Kepley, Florence Cronise, Marion Todd, Ada Bittenbender, Emma Haddock, Laura deValley,
Catharine Van Valkenburg Waite, Mary Ann Greene, Alameda Eliza Hitchcock[6]
[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]
Categories: Women's organizations based in the United States, Women's clubs in the United States
References
edit- ^ a b c d Drachman, Virginia G. (1990). "Women Lawyers and the Quest for Professional Identity in Late Nineteenth-Century America" (PDF). Michigan Law Review. 88 (8): 2414. doi:10.2307/1289542. ISSN 0026-2234.
- ^ a b Bittenbender, Ada M. (1888). "Woman in Law". Chicago Law Times. 2: 301.
- ^ Leary, Margaret A. (2006). "Michigan's First Woman Lawyer: Sarah Killgore Wertman". Law Quad Notes. 48 (3): 8–11.
- ^ Mohraz, Judy Jolley (1982). "The Equity Club: Community Building among Professional Women". The Journal of American Culture. 5 (4): 34–39. doi:10.1111/j.1542-734x.1982.0504_34.x. ISSN 1542-7331.
- ^ Clark, Mary L. (1999). "The First Women Members of the Supreme Court Bar, 1879-1900". San Diego Law Review. 36 (1): 87–136.
- ^ Drachman, Virginia G. (2001). Sisters in Law: Women Lawyers in Modern American History. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-00694-1. OCLC 875599038.
- ^ Ohio Women's Bar Association
- ^ Babcock, Barbara Allen (1998–1999). "Making History". Green Bag. An Entertaining Journal of Law. (Second Series). 2: 65.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date format (link) - ^ Cook, Beverly B. (1980). "Women Judges Organize: In the Footsteps of Women Lawyers". Women Lawyers Journal. 66: 11.
- ^ Mossman, Mary Jane (2012). "Women Lawyers and Women's Legal Equality: Reflections on Women Lawyers at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago". Chicago-Kent Law Review. 87: 503.
- ^ Mossman, Mary Jane (2006-05-31). The First Women Lawyers: A Comparative Study of Gender, Law and the Legal Professions. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84731-095-8.
- ^ Brenner Johnson, Hannah; (Newman) Knake Jefferson, Renee (2019-11-14). "Gender, Power, Law & Leadership (Table of Contents and Introduction)". Rochester, NY.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ^ Historical Research on Female Attorneys in Michigan
- ^ Making History Lelia Robinson's Index to American Women Lawyers
- ^ Ruth S. Stevens (2016). "Assistant US Attorney Ella Mae Backus: "A most important figure in the legal profession in the Western District of Michigan"". Michigan Historical Review. 42 (2): 1. doi:10.5342/michhistrevi.42.2.0001. ISSN 0890-1686.
- ^ Women Defenders in the West
- ^ Sex Discrimination in the Legal Profession: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
- ^ "Catharine McCulloch: Illinois Suffragist and Lawyer – Illinois History & Lincoln Collections". Retrieved 2021-04-09.