Charlotte E. Ray

Charlotte E. Ray was the daughter of Charles Bennett Ray, a prominent abolitionist minister and editor, and grew up in a household deeply engaged in the fight against slavery and for civil rights. She was educated at the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth in Washington, DC, before enrolling at Howard University's law school.

Ray applied to Howard's law programme under the initials 'C.E. Ray' — a common practice at the time believed to have helped obscure her gender from admissions officers who might otherwise have rejected a woman applicant. She graduated in 1872, becoming the third woman in the United States to earn a law degree, and the first Black woman to do so.

Admitted to the District of Columbia bar in 1872, Ray became not only the first Black woman lawyer in American history but the first woman of any race admitted to practise law in the District of Columbia. She opened her own law practice specialising in commercial law, a notably difficult specialism to sustain given the racial and gender prejudice of the era.

Despite her groundbreaking credentials, Ray struggled to maintain a viable client base in the face of widespread discrimination, and she eventually closed her practice, returning to New York to work as a public school teacher. Her achievement nonetheless stood as a landmark first, cited for generations as proof that Black women belonged in the legal profession.