Admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, becoming among the first women lawyers in the U.S.
On September 24, 1873, Belva Lockwood was formally admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, shortly after finally receiving her law diploma. This admission made her one of the very first women in the United States permitted to practice law, at a time when the legal profession was almost universally closed to women by custom, statute, or judicial discretion.
Her admission did not come without struggle: many bar associations and courts across the country routinely denied women admission on the grounds that the practice of law was unsuited to their sex. Lockwood's success in the District of Columbia was itself a hard-won achievement, built on her legal education, her persistence in confronting institutional gatekeepers, and her willingness to litigate and lobby for her own rights when necessary.
This admission launched her active legal career in Washington, D.C., where she built a general practice handling property, pension, and probate cases, and where she began to take on cases with broader social significance, including claims on behalf of Native American nations and other marginalized clients. It set the stage for her subsequent, even more consequential battle to be admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, a fight that would take another five and a half years to win.