Thursday, March 22, 2018

Henderson on an Early African-American Female Lawyer

Taja-Nia Y. Henderson, Rutgers-Newark School of Law, has posted  "I Shall Talk to My Own People": The Intersectional Life and Times of Lutie A. Lytle, which appeared in the Iowa Law Review 102 (2017): 1983-2015:
Lutie A. Lytle (wiki)
In the fall of 1898, the Chicago Tribune hailed Lutie A. Lytle of Topeka as the “only female law instructor in the world.” Notwithstanding this purported shattering of the legal academy’s glass ceiling, Lytle’s accomplishments — her path to the professoriate, and her career in the years following her appointment to the faculty of a Nashville law school — have been largely lost to historians of legal education. She is not among those honored or commemorated by our profession, and her name is largely unknown beyond a small circle of interest. The biographical sketch that follows fills this scholarly gap through an examination of Lytle as a historical figure, using contemporary newspaper accounts and other primary source material to provide context for her achievements and linking her life to previously understudied legal, political and social movements.