Charlotte E. Ray

American lawyer
the American beauty queen

Charlotte E. Ray (January 13, 1850 – January 4, 1911) was an American lawyer. She was the first black American female lawyer in the United States. Ray graduated from Howard University School of Law in 1872. She was also the first female admitted to the District of Columbia Bar, and the first woman admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. Her admission was used as a precedent by women in other states who sought admission to the bar. However, she practiced law for only a few years because prejudice against African Americans and women made her business unsustainable.

Charlotte Ray was born in New York City to Charlotte Augusta Burroughs and Reverend Charles Bennett Ray. Reverend Ray was an important figure in the abolitionist movement and edited a newspaper called The Colored American. Charlotte had six siblings, including two sisters, Henrietta Cordelia and Florence. Education was important to her father, who made sure each of his girls went to college. Charlotte attended a school called the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth (now known as University of the District of Columbia) in Washington, D. C., graduating in 1869. It was one of a few places where a black woman could gain proper education. After this Ray became a teacher at Howard University in the Normal and Preparatory Department, which was the University's Prep School. While teaching at Howard, she registered in the Law Department, as C. E. Ray. but Howard University did not receive its Phi Beta Kappa chapter until 1953. While in law school she is believed to have specialized in corporate law. She has been identified as the woman referred to by General O. O. Howard, the founder and first president of Howard University, as having "read us a thesis on corporations, not copied from the books but from her brain, a clear incisive analysis of one of the most delicate legal questions." Others suggest that Mary Ann Shadd Cary was the person in question.

She was admitted to the Howard School of Law in the District of Columbia in 1872 because she applied under the name "C. E. Ray" and that Ray used an alternate name to disguise her gender so that her admission would not be instantly revoked. According to others, her use of initials is not proven, and it would not have been needed, because Howard University at this time had a clearly articulated policy of acceptance of both Black men and women. Her appointment was noted in the Woman's Journal and gained her inclusion as one of the Women of the Century. Ray began her independent practice of commercial law in 1872, advertising in newspapers such as the New National Era and Citizen, owned by Frederick Douglass. Charlotte Ray was said to be eloquent, authoritative, and "one of the best lawyers on corporations in the country." Yet despite her Howard connections and advertisements, she was unable to maintain a steady client flow, sufficient to support herself. Regardless of her legal knowledge and corporate law expertise, not enough people were willing to trust a black woman with their cases. Instead she returned to teaching, working in the Brooklyn school system. Ray attended the National Woman Suffrage Association's New York convention in 1876. After 1895 Ray seems to have been active in the National Association of Colored Women.