looking back

A spread of documents related to the Belva Lockwood's life work, including documents from work on women's suffrage and her Supreme Court argument on behalf of the Cherokee Nation.

Laurence Kesterson

Born in 1830 in Royalville, N.Y., to a family of humble means, Belva Lockwood became a widow and single mother at a young age, which ignited her lifelong passion to help women achieve independence. She pursued women’s rights as an educator, lawyer, suffragist, lecturer, and eventually as a candidate for president of the United States in 1884 and 1888.

ONE OF THE JEWELS of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection’s historic manuscript collections is the papers of Belva Lockwood. She may be best-known as the first American woman to run for president*, but that’s only one of the many milestones in her long and storied career.

Born in 1830 in Royalville, N.Y., to a family of humble means, Lockwood became a widow and single mother at a young age, which ignited her lifelong passion to help women achieve independence. She pursued women’s rights as an educator, lawyer, suffragist, lecturer, and eventually as a candidate for president of the United States in 1884 and 1888.

She returned to school after the death of her first husband, and upon graduation, became a teacher and principal at several schools for women. Later, she moved to Washington, D.C., to study and practice law. There she married the Rev. Ezekiel Lockwood, who supported her ambitions.

Lockwood encountered tremendous obstacles in obtaining her law degree and even more in becoming the first woman admitted to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court. Several of the cases she took on — including her first before the Supreme Court, Kaiser v. Stickney (1880) — involved the settling of debts.

Her second case before the high court was United States v. Cherokee Nation (1906). In an 1835 treaty, the Cherokee Nation ceded land in Georgia to the U.S. government for $1 million, but they were never paid in full. Lockwood won the Cherokee Nation $5 million with her argument before the Supreme Court, equivalent to about $165 million today.

— NIA KING

*Technically, Victoria Claflin Woodhull was the first woman to run for president of the U.S., but she was not old enough to serve if she had won.

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