 Photograph of George Heriot De Reef from a report of the Semi-Centennial Celebration of Negro-Freedom, courtesy of the Wisconsin Black Historical Society. By Amy Rabideau Silvers For a man who made headlines in his day, George Heriot De Reef remains a somewhat elusive figure. News items and scholarly mentions provide clues to who he was and what was important to him, not unlike piecing together an incomplete puzzle. De Reef was an attorney, one of the few African American lawyers to practice law in Wisconsin early in the 20th century. He was involved in a host of civic organizations, including serving as president of the Milwaukee chapter of the National Organization for the Advanced of Colored People. And he steadfastly challenged institutional practices—from civil service to jury service—that he believed did not treat citizens in an equal way under the law. The news articles, in keeping with the times, inevitably identified De Reef by race. George De Reef, colored attorney, yesterday became the first of his race ever to seek a judicial post in Milwaukee County …. The problem of appointing a probation officer to work among negroes is not settled to the satisfaction of George De Reef, negro attorney …. Charles Mullineaux, negro, whose trial on the charge of murdering William Jackson, negro, started Tuesday in municipal court, changed his plea of not guilty on advice of his attorney, George De Reef, negro, and pleaded guilty to fourth degree manslaughter. The attorney’s name was spelled in assorted ways, but for the purposes of this article, we’ll (mostly, except in quoted material) use the spelling on his tombstone at Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee. Noteworthy chapters included his challenge to the status quo on jury service. De Reef contended that Black residents should be eligible to serve in Milwaukee County courtrooms, and the barrier officially fell in 1919. “Black residents began serving on juries in the county after Milwaukee attorney George DeReef documented that no Black residents had been chosen out of more than 3,000 jurors in the past decade,” according to a timeline compiled by the City of Milwaukee’s Office of Equity and Justice. (It notes that in 1921 Wisconsin passed legislation to allow women of all races to serve on juries. That followed the 1920 passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote.) “Shall We Be Jim Crowed?” De Reef was also involved in a legal battle on a Milwaukee County civil service position for a Black probation officer to supervise offenders in the Black community. “The problem of appointing a probation officer to work among negroes is not settled to the satisfaction of George De Reef, negro attorney, who filed an amended complaint in circuit court Thursday in his suit to prevent the county civil service commission from creating such a special position for negroes only,” reported The Milwaukee Journal in 1930. The problem, De Reef explained in assorted news accounts, was that such a position would be a step toward segregation and establish a “vicious precedent” for other exclusions.
Photographs of Aug. 14, 1930, clippings from (L) The Milwaukee Journal and (R) the Milwaukee Sentinel. Photographs by Amy Rabideau Silvers. “We don’t want this resolution to pass the county board because it is unconstitutional and, if it is not, we don’t want it because it ought to be,” De Reef said. “I claim the board of supervisors has no more right to bar white men from this job than it has to bar black men.” One story on a community meeting noted that “negroes were called to the meeting by leaflets asking the question, ‘Shall We Be Jim Crowed?’” De Reef and another Black attorney represented J.S. Bennings, of the Wisconsin Equal Rights League, in challenging that posting as “exclusive” to Negro applicants. While a temporary injunction was in place, the Civil Service Commission changed the posting to allow white applicants as well, but did not change who the successful applicant would be supervising. Circuit Judge John J. Gregory ultimately commended the attorneys for defending the constitutional rights of their race and for their foresight in questioning what they termed “arbitrary class legislation,” but found the civil service’s plan to be constitutional. As such situations arose, not everyone in the Black community agreed with De Reef and the no-Jim Crow stance. “These institutional developments represented a northern variant of what Howard Rabinowitz has called, in the southern context, ‘from exclusion to segregation,’” wrote Joe William Trotter, Jr., in Black Milwaukee/The Making of an Industrial Proletariat 1915-1945. Rabinowitz was a professor known for his writing on segregation. “Milwaukee blacks increasingly accepted segregated services as preferable to the pattern of de facto exclusion,” Trotter continued. “As part of his active involvement in the Milwaukee NAACP, he vigorously fought manifestations of segregation in the city’s public institutions,” Trotter wrote. “In 1919, for example, he staunchly opposed the organization of a black Soldiers and Sailors Club for veterans of World War I.” Personal and family history De Reef was born in 1869 in Charleston, South Carolina, to Joseph Moulton Francis De Reef and Georgina Oldfield Heriot De Reef. Accounts, including in Trotter’s Black Milwaukee, describe him as a descendant of a prominent slave-holding family. Generations of De Reef ancestors are listed as owning slaves, part of an often mixed-race “colored” elite before the end of the Civil War. George De Reef’s obituary in 1937 gave the family history a more neutral spin, saying that he was “Born in Charleston, S.C., of a family that had been in the United States for 150 years.” The short obituary announced his death at the Milwaukee County hospital after a long illness. He was 67. De Reef first studied for the Episcopalian ministry but later went to Howard University in Washington, D.C., graduating from the law school in 1905. De Reef practiced law in Washington and served as clerk of the municipal court there. He arrived in Milwaukee in 1913, “becoming one of the first Negro lawyers to practice in Milwaukee,” according to the obituary.  Photograph of an advertisement in the Wisconsin Weekly Blade, courtesy of the Wisconsin Black Historical Society. “He eventually came to Milwaukee and put his mind to solving some of the problems of Black people,” said Clayborn Benson, founder and executive director of the Wisconsin Black Historical Society. “He practiced law throughout the state, in Madison, Racine, Oshkosh, Kenosha.” Indeed, there were few Black lawyers in Wisconsin for most of his professional life. By the 1930 U.S. Census, he was one of only three Black male lawyers in Wisconsin—A.B. Nutt and James Weston Dorsey were the others. Mabel Raimey was the only Black woman to practice law, according to an article by law professor J. Gordon Hylton of Marquette University. “It was DeReef more than any other single attorney who left his mark upon the social, economic, and political life of blacks during the period,” said Trotter in his book. “His career vividly reflects ways in which the ideology of self-help and racial solidarity overlapped with an emphasis on racial protest and integration.” Many civic roles In other professional matters, De Reef became a founding officer in the Columbia Building and Loan Association, launched by Ardie and Wilbur Halyard. The first African American financial institution in the state, it opened in 1925 to give members a place to invest their funds and acquire home and business loans, according to Black Milwaukee. De Reef served as vice president for the Community Drug Store, described as the most important retail establishment for the community, and the only store of its kind owned and operated by Blacks in the state. He was co-editor and part-owner of the Wisconsin Weekly Blade, and a member of the Milwaukee Negro Business Association. Another news account mentioned that De Reef served as chairman of the committee seeing off 79 “colored selectmen” for what would become known as World War I.  Image of clipping in the Aug. 2, 1918, Milwaukee Sentinel. Photograph by Amy Rabideau Silvers. The men left with the prayers of the community, charged with doing their part for country and race. “Play your part; acquit yourselves like men, so when the history of the world is written it may be said the American negro was ready to lay down his life for democracy,” declared the pastor, J.O. Morley. “And when you return, may you find a new America, free from mobocracy, the Jim Crowism of the past and the prejudice from which you have suffered at times.” A courthouse fight De Reef made news of a less sedate nature after another attorney apparently poached his clients, with a headline reading: “‘Case Stolen,’ Lawyer Hits/Negro Attorney Gives Client’s New Counsel a Punch.” The fight occurred in a Safety Building corridor—not a courtroom—and involved De Reef defending his right to defend his client, according to one newspaper account. “Only one blow was struck Wednesday; that being from the fist of George De Reef, negro attorney, on the nose of Harold A. Baume, who, De Reef claims, ‘stole’ his case. … “De Reef claims that Baume has been in the habit of stealing his cases. A week ago in district court De Reef said he discovered his name scratched from the record in the case of Joe Brazzell, negro charged with assault, and that of Harold A. Baume substituted. De Reef called the attention of Judge A.J. Hedding to the substitution and mentioned ‘ambulance chasing.’ “‘That isn’t ambulance chasing, George,’ the court replied. ‘That’s just plain grand larceny.’” For the record, Baume and his “injured feature” retired to the washroom. When the case was called, De Reef was the attorney of record. And yet more civic and civil activities De Reef spoke out in other venues, including as dozens of so-called vagrants were rounded up in 1923. “Negroes Not Wanted in Milwaukee, Wis.,” read the headline in The Winston County Journal in Mississippi.  News of the vagrancy case in Milwaukee in The Winston County Journal, Sept. 7, 1923, page 1. A total of 39 people were arrested during “a general cleanup … in the west side negro district staged by three squads of detectives,” the report read. “Police say more than 100 negroes a week have been coming from the South to Milwaukee.” Twelve were released, with the remaining 27 sentenced as vagrants, none represented by counsel. “We do not want men of your kind in Milwaukee,” Judge Michael Blenski said. “I am not taking exception to your race but to your actions. You are vagrants who came noth (sic) expecting to find a soft living. “I am going to give you a chance to work for the county for 90 days and at the end of this time you will have 90 minutes to get out of town. Write all your friends down in the south and tell them about it.” De Reef, identified as a member of the Milwaukee Urban League and president of the local NAACP, reportedly said that the organizations did not object to the arrest of vagrants or miscreants but hoped that Milwaukee would not class all negroes as vagrants. He was also a member of the Free Masons, Benson said. “The Masons took a leading role in helping people migrate up here to Milwaukee,” Benson said. “The Free Masons and the Masonic Temple were encouraging and supporting them in that endeavor.” Another news account reported on De Reef's appearance at a hearing before the state Assembly’s Judiciary Committee. “Charges that several automobile insurance companies forced negroes to disguise their racial identities in order to obtain policies were made … by George De Reef, representing the National Association for the Advancement of the Colored Race. “His statement was made in giving approval to the Rubin bill providing prosecution for companies refusing to sell insurance to a person because of race or color,” according to the Milwaukee Sentinel. De Reef was long active in Republican Party politics, running for the Wisconsin Assembly in 1924. He made headlines as he took out nomination papers as a candidate for the new branch No. 9 of the circuit court in 1934, but later decided to withdraw from that race. He was not elected to public office. He was appointed to head the state committee organizing the Semi-Centennial Celebration of Negro-Freedom, a national exhibition held in Chicago in 1915 in honor of 50 years of freedom following the end of the Civil War.  Image of the report of the Semi-Centennial Celebration of Negro-Freedom, courtesy of the Wisconsin Black Historical Association. “The members of both the commission and committee endeavored to secure the active co-operation of the colored race of Wisconsin in producing appropriate exhibitions and demonstrations that were typical of negro talent and genius in their different industrial, economic and professional pursuits in this state,” read a report on the event. The Wisconsin delegation included 100 children from St. Benedict the Moor School, which taught Black children. Wisconsin’s Black population then totaled 2,900 people, according to the report. And there is yet one more piece of evidence on what kind of man De Reef was. His name appears in a newspaper advertisement decrying the Wisconsin congressman who did not vote for a national anti-lynching bill in 1922.  Photograph of an NAACP Advocate publication in 1922, courtesy of the Wisconsin Black Historical Society. “That took a lot of courage to call out a congressman who did not support the anti-lynching bill in Washington, D.C.,” said Benson. “The KKK was very active in Wisconsin—Madison, Fond du Lac, Appleton—in the 1920s to 1935, 1940, holding parades and gatherings out in the open. “He is an important man. Period,” Benson said. “He took on issues and he was everywhere.”  De Reef's grave in Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee on Oct. 12, 2024, after WJI Executive Director Margo Kirchner uncovered it and cleared away the grass and dirt.  This project is supported by grants from   By Amy Rabideau Silvers Before she was a name on streets and buildings, Vel Phillips was a young woman who became a lawyer and public official, all in the interest of equal rights and justice. She also became a long list of firsts.  Vel Phillips was recognized as a distinguished alumna at the University of Wisconsin in 2013. Photograph courtesy of University Communications. Phillips was the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin law school. Only five years later, she was the first woman—and first Black person—elected to the Milwaukee Common Council. Later she would be the first woman judge in Milwaukee County and the first Black person to serve in Wisconsin’s judiciary. Then she became the first Black person elected to statewide office in Wisconsin. That is the stuff of resumes and history books, but it does not really tell the story of Vel Phillips and what she experienced along the way. She was born Velvalea Hartence Rodgers in Milwaukee, the first name in honor of an aunt. Her father, Russell Rodgers, was then a garage worker, and her mother, Thelma Payne Rodgers, a homemaker. They became the parents of three daughters. “Women of that era were still given few choices—teacher, nurse,” said Michael Phillips, Vel’s son, in an interview with Wisconsin Justice Initiative. “You do anything that you can do,” Thelma told their daughters. Young Vel graduated from North Division High School, struggling for the chance to take college prep classes and be on the forensics teams. She never forgot how teachers and counselors told her such things would be of no use to Black students. A national Elks Club oratorical contest proved to be her ticket to college. She won first place and that award helped her get to Howard University, a renowned historically Black college in Washington, D.C. She graduated and was back in Milwaukee when she met W. Dale Phillips at a party. He had served in World War II and used the G.I. Bill to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They quickly eloped—on their third date—but kept the marriage secret until a church wedding about a year later. She encouraged him to consider becoming a lawyer. He agreed and headed back to Madison as a law student, while she studied at the Milwaukee Teachers College, now the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Then came her own epiphany. “I want to be a lawyer, too,” she decided, according to their son, attorney Michael Phillips. She followed her husband to Madison, graduating from law school in 1951, the year after he graduated. Even for university students—and even in Madison—race was a factor. They moved out of their privately-owned apartment in protest after white neighbors circulated a petition against allowing other African Americans to move in. “That was quite a shattering experience, and it spoiled it for me,” she said, speaking in “Dream Big Dreams,” a Wisconsin Public Television documentary that first aired in 2015.
The politics of race and sex The couple opened a law firm in Milwaukee. She encouraged him to run for office, but he thought she should be the candidate. She first tried for a seat on the Milwaukee School Board, losing that bid in 1953. Three years later, she ran for the Milwaukee Common Council, in part with money her husband had saved to buy her a mink coat. “So I said to him, ‘Dale, I’d rather run than have a mink coat,’” she said in an interview with Milwaukee Magazine. At a time when few women successfully ran for office, she changed her legal name to the less-obviously-feminine Vel R. Phillips—and deliberately did not include a photo on campaign literature for that first council race. Phillips won but found she was no more welcome than at their first Madison apartment. It was 1956 and the white men of the Common Council did not think the person they called “Madame Alderman” belonged, including in the only restroom in the council chambers. “I always knock before I enter,” she said. “There will be more of us in the future.” For the record, Phillips was also the first pregnant council member. She gave birth to son Dale the summer after the spring election. Phillips proved to be the council representative for more than her aldermanic district. “I was alone in many ways,” Phillips said in one interview. “I had the burden of representing every African American in the city. No matter where they lived, I was their alderman and they called me—if they had their electricity turned off, if they needed a job, if they wanted a streetlight repaired, whatever. “They felt close to me. What could I say to them? I’m not your alderman? I couldn’t say that.” The battle for fair housing While campaigning door-to-door and then as an alderman, Phillips heard the horror stories about inadequate housing and discrimination, and saw how many Black residents struggled to find a decent place to live. “Not only were people segregated, but there were problems with sometimes electricity, sometimes not, sometimes water, sometimes not,” son Michael said. “Fair housing became her issue.” In 1962, Phillips introduced an open housing ordinance. She introduced it every 90 days for seven years. And when the open housing marches began, she joined them, helping to lead marchers with Father James Groppi, the NAACP and its Youth Council to Milwaukee’s segregated white neighborhoods. Mobs screamed abuse. “They dumped urine on us and rotten eggs,” she recalled. “I was afraid.” Phillips was among those arrested for curfew violations at a protest rally. Mayor Henry Maier was furious at her activism. “Henry gave me such a hard time,” Phillips said. “He’d call me into his office and ream me out and swear and say, ‘Don’t you know what you’re doing is making me pay on the south side?’ “He’d tell me, ‘What you need is a good whipping,’” she said. Others struggled, at least more politely, to understand. “I remember a nice white man who asked me during the open housing marches, ‘What is it you people want?” Phillips said. “I said, ‘My dear man, the same things you want. A place to live, green grass, a white picket fence, a place to go to work and good schools for our children.’” In 1967, the council finally passed a far weaker version of an open housing ordinance. She vehemently opposed it. “Thanks for nothing,” Phillips then said. “You are very much too late and very much too little.” But the political tides, both national and local, were shifting. Congress passed the Fair Housing Act of 1968, just days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. “Later that month, the Common Council, with several new members, including a second African-American, passed, by a 15-4 vote, a housing discrimination bill that had been strengthened by an amendment by Ms. Phillips,” according to an obituary for her in The New York Times.  Vel Phillips with the Milwaukee NAACP Youth Council. Photograph courtesy of Michael Phillips. Party politics and influence Early on, Phillips also became involved in Democratic Party politics, elected as a national committeewoman in 1958. Two years later, she was re-elected and named to the platform committee. “She had conversations with John F. Kennedy and he admitted he didn’t really know any Black people,” Michael said of his mother, who supported Kennedy early in his campaign. “It was that admission that helped fuel some of my mom’s trust, that a white man would say that.” Kennedy became the party’s nominee for president. The civil rights plank became a matter of debate, with Florida Sen. Spessard L. Holland arguing that southern delegations opposed “government-enforced social equality.” Phillips spoke directly to that. “How, Senator, can you expect the nations of the world to respect us if we take a weak position on enforcing equality for all our citizens?” she declared, according to an Associated Press report. “Winning isn’t nearly so important as doing the right thing,” Phillips said. Her arguments helped win the day and a strong civil rights platform for the party she loved. “It was my mom’s influence on John Kennedy that helped cement his resolve to adopt a civil rights platform,” Michael said. “And it changed our country.” For her part, Phillips proudly called herself a “yellow-dog Democrat,” playing on the old saying that she would vote for a yellow dog before voting for a Republican. Along the way, Phillips had conversations with two more presidents—Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter. She heard King give his “I Have a Dream” speech and spoke frequently with him as he led protests across the country. “I can’t tell you how many times I picked up the phone and heard it was Martin Luther King,” said Michael. “He’d say, ‘Is Vel there?’ and ‘Get your mom.’ Martin called the house once a week maybe. In the late ’70s, Jimmy Carter called the house a lot, too.” Those were moments and relationships she cherished even more with the passage of time.  Vel Phillips with John F. Kennedy. Photograph courtesy of Michael Phillips. And yet more roles In 1971, Alderwoman Phillips got a new job. Gov. Patrick Lucey appointed her to children’s court for Milwaukee County. She served until the election, when she lost her bid for a full term. The next few years were filled with law practice, teaching and her own gentle brand of agitating for change. In 1978, she ran for secretary of state, becoming the first Black person to win statewide office. By 1981, there were other headlines. Phillips was reprimanded by the state ethics board and ordered to repay $8,000 related to work expenses and fees for speeches. She lost a primary challenge when she ran for re-election. “I never felt I did anything wrong,” she said many years later in the Milwaukee Magazine interview. In ways large and small, she remained a trusted friend to many in the Milwaukee community and beyond. “I miss her,” said Maxine White, now chief judge of the state Court of Appeals. “I miss her a lot.” White recalled first meeting Phillips in the 1970s. “I was a supervisor with the Social Security administration,” White told WJI. “She was a guest speaker at the office for Women’s History Month. We were not lawyers—we were processing Social Security claims—and she made us feel what we did was important.” Later Phillips became a mentor and a friend. White saw first-hand how people in all kinds of situations came to Phillips for advice. She remembers how her friend would listen and what she would say. “Well, let me give some thought to that. I’ll call you back.” “Do you really care what they think? It’s what you think.” “You can do this. Just take your time, just break it down and figure out what you need to do.” “If you don’t try, you’ll never know.” “They were life lessons, Vel lessons,” White said. “She was the go-to person if someone wanted to pursue anything, not just law. She would encourage young men, businesswomen, white and Black.” Margo Kirchner, now WJI executive director, remembers the day a defendant in federal court delayed accepting a plea deal. “He talked it over with his attorney but also needed to talk to Vel Phillips before accepting the plea,” she said. “She was a force in the community for so many years.”  Hon. Maxine White, now chief judge of the state Court of Appeals, proudly keeps a portrait of mentor Vel Phillips. Photograph courtesy of Maxine White. A legacy of caring In her later years, even as she grew increasingly frail, Phillips still spoke out for what she believed. She died April 17, 2018. She was 95. “She was always moving beyond boundaries and moving to bring people together,” James Hall Jr., long a civil rights attorney in Milwaukee, told the State Bar of Wisconsin’s WisBar News after Phillips' death. (Hall died early in 2024.) “She had a fundamental sense of fairness, justice, and equality,” he said. “And she felt strongly enough to make that her life’s work. “All of our lives would be very different” without Vel Phillips, Hall said. “If there was an issue related housing, jobs, women’s rights, or education, she would be there,” said Hall. “She would be up front and prepared to speak to it, to move the agenda forward. She would let her voice be heard.” It was what she said anyone—and everyone—could do. “This was a movement,” she once said at a commemorative event, “and a movement requires you and you and you. You can’t have a movement without the people.” Phillips is remembered in ways both poignant and powerful. The young woman whose neighbors did not want her in their Madison housing lived to see a university residence hall named in her honor. The judge who did not get elected to her own term now has her name on the Vel R. Phillips Juvenile Justice Center. The girl who was told she didn’t need advanced placement classes grew up to start the Vel Phillips Foundation, providing minority scholarships and awards for social justice work. Other scholarships include the VelanDale scholarships through the Wisconsin Association of African-American Lawyers. Schools, too, are named in her honor, including the newly renamed Vel R. Phillips Memorial High School in Madison. And now there is a statue. The advocate and activist who stood for equal rights has a permanent spot on the state Capitol grounds, the first statue of any person of color there. Dedicated this summer, the statue shows Vel Phillips sitting, accessible to all, and asking a question. “What have you done, today, that’s good?” says the inscription, quoting her words. The statue is really more than a monument to one woman, said Michael Phillips. “It is a beacon of hope and a call to action,” he said. “It serves as a potent reminder that we all can shatter barriers and champion the values she lived by.” His grandmother told Vel and her sisters “they could do anything or be anything they wanted.” “I would encourage young people to listen to elder voices in the community,” Michael said. “And look at my mom as a person who listened to those voices and as an example of what a young person can do when she has support.”  A UW residence hall was named in Vel Phillips' honor. Photograph courtesy of University of Wisconsin Law School.  The Vel Phillips statue on the Wisconsin Capitol grounds. Photograph by Margo Kirchner. This project is supported by grants from  Shirley S. Abrahamson. Photograph courtesy of the authors of www.shirleyabranamson.org. By Amy Rabideau Silvers An obituary in The New York Times called her “an indefatigable jurist known for her activist voice and tart dissents.” The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s obituary called her someone who crashed through barriers for women, earning “a national reputation as a leader in liberal judicial thought.” Others called Shirley Abrahamson a mentor and a friend. Abrahamson was the first woman appointed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, serving 43 years on the bench, including 19 years as chief justice. At retirement, she was the longest-serving state court justice in the country, and she certainly remains the longest serving in Wisconsin history. Appointed by Gov. Patrick Lucey* in 1976, she went on to win four 10-year terms. For many of those years, she was the only woman on the bench. By the time she retired in 2019, five of the seven justices were women, later to be joined by a sixth. “Among jurists I have encountered in the United States and abroad, Shirley Abrahamson is the very best,” declared Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a videotaped tribute as Abrahamson retired. “The most courageous and sage, the least self-regarding. “She has been ever mindful of the people—all of the people—the law exists, or should exist to serve,” Ginsburg said. “As a lawyer, law teacher and judge, she has inspired legions to follow in her way, to strive constantly to make the legal system genuinely equal and accessible to all.” An early dream Abrahamson was born Shirley Schlanger, the daughter of Manhattan grocers Leo and Ceil Schlanger. Her parents were immigrants from Poland, and as the family story goes, little Shirley was 4 when she decided that she wanted to be president. At 6, she changed her mind and decided to become a lawyer. She later told the story of wanting a library card after the family moved for a time to New Jersey, while she was in grade school. “My mother and I went to the public library, but I couldn’t get a card because my parents didn’t own property,” Abrahamson recalled. “You see, your family had to own property to get a library card.” Her father ended up taking off work to find the landlord and persuaded him to write a letter. The situation left her feeling “that my family was put into this second-class position. … My father was running a successful grocery business, paid his bills, and why I couldn’t get a library card. … It just didn’t make sense … and it didn’t seem fair.” Fair was something she felt everybody deserved. Facing other challenges She graduated from high school at 16. She next graduated from York University in Manhattan, magna cum laude, and married Seymour Abrahamson. Together they relocated to Indiana University in Bloomington. There she graduated first in her law school class in 1956. She received no job offers. “She was a woman and she was Jewish,” said Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, speaking in an interview with Wisconsin Justice Initiative. “The dean of the law school told her she wouldn’t get a job, but he’d try to get her a job as a law librarian.” Instead, Shirley and Seymour—he earned a doctorate in genetics—moved to Madison. There Abrahamson studied with J. Willard Hurst, a UW law school professor and pioneer in legal history, earning a doctorate in 1962. That same year she was hired at La Follette, Sinykin, Doyle & Anderson—the first woman hired by a private law firm in Madison. Within the year, she became a named partner. Abrahamson soon began teaching at the law school. In 1966, she was offered a professorship in tax law. She accepted on the condition that the other woman on the faculty, Assistant Professor Margo Melli, also receive tenure.  Abrahamson in court (likely early to mid-1960s). Photograph created by Edwin Stein, courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society, image WJI 149705. A master at mentoring Along the way, she offered encouragement to countless others. Angela Bartell, now retired as a Dane County Circuit Court judge, remembers going to the UW Law School to meet with Abrahamson before enrolling in 1968. “She was one of two women professors—Margo Melli was the other,” Bartell told WJI. “My husband graduated from law school in 1968 and there were only four or five women in his class. And so I met with the two women on the faculty and said, ‘How did you do this?’ and they were both very encouraging.” The few women students found support with each other—and in the one women’s restroom in the old section of the law building, complete with a fainting-style couch. “You knew you could likely find women there,” she said. “It was a shelter—that’s really the only word for it—from the battle that was going on outside.” Women found an even bigger challenge at graduation, especially if they wanted to join a private practice. Bartell experienced that firsthand in 1971. “There was the question of whether clients would be comfortable with a woman lawyer. Would women lawyers be a viable economic resource? Were women tough enough to fight in an adversarial system? This is sounding quite quaint,” she said, with a laugh. “I had only one offer, though I graduated first in my class,” Bartell said. “So the profession was not open. I ended up joining the law firm where Shirley was a named partner, so I had a woman colleague. “It became a ritual for law firms to take the new woman and introduce her to Shirley Abrahamson,” she said. “It was a long and bumpy road, and Shirley was this high-performing, welcoming mentor to all, and that was for decades. She was such a pioneer.” Abrahamson was a founder of the Legal Association for Women, which began in 1974, for women in law in the Dane County area. “She was a mentor to women all over the state,” said former Justice Janine Geske, who joined her as the second woman on the Supreme Court in 1993. “Male attorneys would bring their daughters to meet her.”  Abrahamson at her 1976 swearing-in ceremony. Photograph by WiscNews, courtesy of authors of www.shirleyabrahamson.org. Queen of court outreach Abrahamson championed judicial outreach, helping to create programs that included the award-winning Court with Class program. Tens of thousands of students have visited the State Capitol to hear oral arguments and meet with a justice. Abrahamson also believed that the courts could go to the people, promoting the Justice on Wheels effort. That, too, continues. “Pick a county—from Kenosha to Superior, Door County to Rock County—and we go there and have legal arguments and meet with people in the community,” Bradley said. Then there’s the Tootsie the Goldfish lesson, in which kids get to “think like a judge.” “She was the queen of outreach for the courts,” Bradley said. Geske agreed. “She was always thinking of ways to connect people to the courts,” Geske said. That included traveling to speak to any group interested in the legal system. Her friends quipped that no distance was too great and no group too small to talk about the courts. “Before we were close friends, she called and asked if I would go speak because she was snowed in at JFK,” said Geske, who agreed to fill in. “There were maybe 12 people there.” Once while traveling in northern Wisconsin, she ended up in a boat with musky fishermen. “She caught the winning musky,” Geske said. “And she had it stuffed and hung on the wall of her chambers.”  Abrahamson presiding over a Justice on Wheels hearing. Photograph courtesy of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and authors of www.shirleyabrahamson.com.  Play the Toosie the Goldfish game by clicking on this graphic. Creating change and connections In other noteworthy efforts, Abrahamson served on the citizens’ committee studying how to reorganize the state courts in the 1970s. That resulted in the creation of the Court of Appeals. Study committee meetings were being held throughout the state, with one scheduled at the Madison Club. There was only one problem with that plan. “The club had no women members,” Bartell said. “And no women were allowed at the bar level. Shirley Abrahamson was not going to be allowed to attend the meeting. She took that up like a tigress. The committee pulled out of that location and they met elsewhere. “She fought not only so many battles herself but she served as a shield for other women coming up behind her,” said Bartell. Abrahamson was involved in writing Madison’s equal-opportunity law and served as director of the local American Civil Liberties Union chapter from 1967 to 1974. And, later as a justice, she partnered with tribal leaders, including the Wisconsin Tribal Judges Association, to hold the first conference for tribal and state court officials. “She had the first state courts conference ever in the nation,” Bradley said. “I remember sitting at a table with someone from a tribe in Alaska. People came from that far.” Time on Wisconsin Supreme Court During her long years on the court, Abrahamson participated in more than 3,500 cases, authoring 535 majority opinions, 493 dissenting opinions, and 326 concurring opinions. She did not mince words in her dissents. In a 1992 case, State v. Mitchell, the court ruled that an increased penalty in a hate crime case was unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court later reversed that decision. Wrote Abrahamson: “Bigots are free to think and express themselves as they wish, except that they may not engage in criminal conduct in furtherance of their beliefs. The state’s interest in punishing bias-related criminal conduct related only to the protection of equal rights and the prevention of crime, not to the suppression of free expression.” A 2015 case involved whether Gov. Scott Walker had illegally coordinated with conservative groups during a recall effort. A divided Supreme Court decision ended the investigation. “Lest the length, convoluted analysis and overblown rhetoric of the majority opinion obscure its effect, let me state clearly,” she said in her dissent. “The majority opinion adopts an unprecedented and faulty interpretation of Wisconsin’s campaign finance law and of the First Amendment.” Some of her writing was for in-house reading only. “We used to circulate proposed decisions among the justices and conference those opinions,” Geske said of their shared time on the state Supreme Court. “Shirley would issue three-page, single-spaced memos on an opinion. I learned to appreciate what she was doing. She wanted my opinion to be as clear as possible, and her memos helped me write a better decision. She was the smartest and hardest working person I ever met.” Abrahamson began serving as chief justice in 1996, when she became the most senior member of the court. That changed in 2015, with a constitutional amendment to allow justices to select their own chief justice. Conservative justices quickly picked Justice Patience Roggensack. Abrahamson sued in federal court—lost and then appealed—before deciding the case would take too long. Instead, she vowed to remain “independent, impartial and nonpartisan, and help the court system improve.” She retired in 2019, a year after being diagnosed with cancer. She died of pancreatic cancer in 2020. Abrahamson was 87. And beyond Wisconsin Abrahamson earned a reputation throughout the country and internationally, especially well known for what has been called new federalism. “She was among a handful, not even a full handful, of judges and justices in the country really leading the charge of revitalizing state constitutions, and she was at the head of that,” Bradley said in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel after Abrahamson’s death. Abrahamson concluded a 1982 law review article on new federalism by invoking the words of an 1855 decision (Attorney General ex rel. Bashford v. Barstow 4 Wis. 567, 758 (1855)) by the Wisconsin Supreme Court: “The people then made this constitution, and adopted it as their primary law. The people of other states made for themselves respectively, constitutions which are construed by their own appropriate functionaries. Let them construe theirs—let us construe, and stand by ours.” “The idea,” Bradley told WJI, “is that state constitutions may provide individual rights in excess of those given by the federal Constitution. Not fewer rights but more.” Abrahamson was considered for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court as early as 1979 by President Jimmy Carter to fill a possible vacancy by Justice William J. Brennan Jr. (Brennan continued serving until 1990.) In 1993, Abrahamson was on the short list to replace Justice Byron R. White. President Bill Clinton instead chose Ginsburg. Setting the bar on ethics Abrahamson did more than talk about judicial ethics and independence. Judges, she believed, needed to be absolutely beyond reproach. “As a judge, you are not supposed to endorse partisan candidates,” Geske said. Abrahamson did not endorse any candidates or accept any gifts. “She had a hard-and-fast rule,” Geske said. “I could not buy her a cup of coffee. Ann (Walsh Bradley) and I would take her out for her birthday, and she would pay the check. No one could question her ethics.” Should any question of ethics arise, “I would think, ‘What would Shirley do?’” she said. Geske said Abrahamson would have been deeply concerned about questions involving judicial integrity, including the recent decision regarding presidential immunity. “She’d be going nuts at what’s going on right now, especially with the U.S. Supreme Court, at the partisanship and the bias,” Geske said. “That would have really bothered her.” Continuing a legacy Friends and colleagues believe that Shirley Abrahamson’s legacy has the power to inspire others to care about the judicial system. Toward that goal, they began the Chief Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson Legacy Committee. Projects include annual awards for law students committed to “social justice, an independent judiciary, and equal rights for all.” The reading room at the Wisconsin Historical Society has been dedicated in her honor. There’s a website about her with everything from a timeline and family photos to resources regarding her opinions. Committee members are exploring the possibility of a documentary about her life and influence. Should anyone think that Shirley Abrahamson was all serious business, just remember that Toostie the Goldfish is still teaching kids to think like a judge. “Shirley was fun,” Bradley said of her friend. “She had an absolute commitment to maintaining and restoring public trust in the judiciary,” said Bradley. “She believed in justice and equal justice for all.” Whatever the topic, Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson had a way with words. Here are a few quotes, taken from the website dedicated to her legacy. More quotes may be found at www.shirleyabrahamson.org/quotes/.
*Note: This story was updated on Aug. 22, 2024, to correct the name of the governor who appointed Abrahamson. We apologize for the error. (Thank you careful readers!) This project is supported by grants from  By Margo Kirchner Monday, June 17, is Wisconsin Women Lawyers Day, so proclaimed by Gov. Tony Evers to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the first woman's admission to the practice of law in Wisconsin. Lavinia Goodell was admitted to practice law at the Rock County Courthouse on June 17, 1874, following a bar exam conducted orally in a courtroom by a judge and senior lawyers. Milwaukee County will honor its women lawyers in a ceremony at 9 a.m. Monday in Room 200 of the Milwaukee County Courthouse. County Executive David Crowley and County Board of Supervisors Chair Marcelia Nicholson will recognize female deputy corporation counsel and court commissioners, the Milwaukee Justice Center director, and other female attorneys working for the county. In Rock County, a ceremony and short reenactment of Goodell’s admission to law practice is planned for 5 p.m. Monday at the courthouse in Janesville. Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Annette Ziegler is scheduled to speak, as are Dane County Circuit Judge Angela Bartell (retired), who is president of the Wisconsin Historical Society Board of Curators; State Bar of Wisconsin Executive Director Larry Martin; Green County Circuit Judge Jane Bucher; and Rachel Frost Starkey, a descendant of Goodell’s sister. Rock County Circuit Judge Barbara McCrory will preside over the ceremony. Milton Municipal Judge Kris Koeffler has coordinated the reenactment. A reception will follow at a Janesville wine bar. A committee of women attorneys has been working since mid-2023 not only to commemorate Goodell’s bar admission but also to celebrate Wisconsin women in the law more broadly. In addition to planning the Rock County event, members of the committee advocated for the governor’s proclamation and a series of articles in Wisconsin Lawyer magazine profiling current-day women in Wisconsin’s legal profession. Committee member Nancy Kopp says she came up with the idea of celebrating Goodell's admission to practice almost two years ago. “It dawned on me that there had not been a celebration in 1924 or 1974, 50 and 100 years after Lavinia became the state's first woman lawyer, and I thought it would be a shame to let the 150th anniversary pass without doing something to honor the occasion,” she told WJI. “It is very rewarding to be able to host a celebration of her admission to practice exactly 150 years after it occurred, in a courthouse that sits on the same site as the one in which she passed a bar examination,” Kopp said. Kopp first heard of Goodell in the 1970s and together with attorney Colleen Ball founded www.LaviniaGoodell.com, a website devoted to Goodell’s story and accomplishments. “I have been researching Lavinia for six years now and in addition to learning a great deal about her, I have also learned a great deal about the history of Janesville and Lavinia's contemporaries,” Kopp said. Kopp’s research into Goodell led to contact with descendants of Goodell’s sister, and several of them are expected at the Rock County Courthouse event. “While they were aware that Lavinia was Wisconsin's first female lawyer, they knew very few details about her life and have been very excited to see all the information that has come to life,” said Kopp. Committee members also have planned a special continuing legal education program on June 20 at the State Bar of Wisconsin’s annual meeting and conference. The program will discuss legal developments affecting women such as the right to practice law, the right for married women to have credit and own property in their own names, fair employment, and the Violence Against Women Act. Presenters include Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, former State Bar President Diane Diel, Elizabeth Fernandez, Martina Gast, and Kopp. On Aug. 8, Old World Wisconsin will stage a reenactment of Goodell's supreme court battle with Chief Justice Edward Ryan for the right to argue before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Back in 1874, attorneys were admitted to practice at the trial court level. Goodell found that practicing before the state Supreme Court was a separate matter. Her attempt to appeal a case to that court was rejected because of her gender. Goodell lost her petition to that court to proceed with her client’s appeal. Ryan infamously wrote in his decision denying Goodell’s application that “(t)he law of nature destines and qualifies the female sex for the bearing and nurture of the children of our race and for the custody of the homes of the world and their maintenance in love and honor. And all life-long callings of women, inconsistent with these radical and sacred duties of their sex, as is the profession of law, are departures from the order of nature; and when voluntary, treason against it.” Undeterred, Goodell found another route. She drafted a bill to prohibit gender discrimination in the practice of law, persuaded male legislators to pass it, and persuaded a male governor to sign it, opening the Supreme Court door to women. WJI profiled Goodell, her groundbreaking achievement, and her fight to argue before the Wisconsin Supreme Court in this “Unsung Heroes” post. Read more here. Earlier this year WJI called upon the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the State Capitol and Executive Residence Board to commemorate this 150th anniversary year with portraits of the court’s female chief justices and a bust of Goodell in the Supreme Court hearing room foyer. Goodell’s bust could be appropriately placed opposite Ryan’s.
Text of Evers' proclamation: WHEREAS; over 9.400 women lawyers throughout Wisconsin pay a vital role in providing legal services to the public for law firms, private corporations, banks, insurance companies, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies; and WHEREAS; on June 17, 1874, Lavinia Goodell became the first woman lawyer in Wisconsin, pioneering a path for women in the legal profession across the state; and WHEREAS; despite facing institutional barriers, including being refused admission to practice before the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1875 based on her gender, Lavinia Goodell demonstrated unwavering resilience and advocated for legislation that prohibited discrimination on the grounds of sex in admission to practice before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which was signed into law in 1877; and WHEREAS; over the past 150 years, countless women have entered the legal profession, contributing to the richness, diversity, and fairness of the Wisconsin and national legal system; and WHEREAS; women lawyers in Wisconsin have been instrumental in driving significant legal reforms, advocating for the rights of the underrepresented, enhancing the delivery of justice, and fostering an inclusive environment that values diversity and equality within the legal community; and WHEREAS; the state of Wisconsin recognizes the lasting impact of women lawyers on the fabric of the state's legal system and emphasizes the importance of continuing to support and promote the advancement of women in the legal profession; NOW, THEREFORE, I, Tony Evers, Governor of the State of Wisconsin, do hereby proclaim June 17, 2024, as WISCONSIN WOMEN LAWYERS DAY throughout the State of Wisconsin, and I commend this observance to all our state's residents.
Images from the 1887 and 1891 University of Wisconsin Law School graduating class photographs. University of Wisconsin Law Library Digital Repository, Alumni Photos Collection. By Amy Rabideau Silvers In the history of Wisconsin law, it’s safe to say there has never been anything quite like Kate Hamilton Pier and her daughters. Their story began in the 19th century, decades before women won the right even to vote. Miss Kate Hamilton Pier, daughter of mother Kate Hamilton Pier, graduated from high school in Fond du Lac at 16 and wanted to study law at the Wisconsin State University in Madison, now the University of Wisconsin. Mrs. Pier decided to attend law school, in part to accompany her daughter but also to develop her own business skills. “She greatly desired that her daughters should begin business life under her personal supervision,” according to a sort of who’s who published in 1893 with the weighty title A Woman of the Century: 1470 Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life, edited by Frances Elizabeth Willard and Mary Ashton Rice Livermore. “She had started alone and knew what pioneer business undertaking meant for a woman,” the entry continued. “She wished her girls to benefit by her experience.” Mother and daughter completed the two-year law course in one year, graduating in 1887 with high honors. By 1891, two younger daughters, Caroline Hamilton Pier and Harriet Hamilton Pier, followed suit. Of the eight women then practicing law in Wisconsin, four of them were named Pier. They became, as a headline in The Ladies’ Home Journal declared in 1892, “A Law Firm of Women.” That was just the beginning. “Besides practicing law, the Piers also successfully advocated for legislative changes that expanded opportunities for women,” said an article in Wisconsin Lawyer, published by the State Bar of Wisconsin. “One such accomplishment was to secure statutory amendments that removed bans prohibiting women attorneys from appointments as court commissioners.” The change cleared the way for Mrs. Pier to be appointed Milwaukee County circuit court commissioner in 1892—the first woman to serve as a judicial officer in the United States. The Wisconsin Lawyer article, written by Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah C. Dugan, noted that it would be 44 years before a Wisconsin woman was appointed to serve as judge by a governor, and 78 years before a woman was elected. Daughter Kate was involved in several state Supreme Court cases, writing one brief soon after law school graduation and appearing with her father, attorney C.K. Pier. In 1889, daughter Kate—under the name Kate H. Pier—became the first woman to argue before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. She won that case and later others. In 1894, she became the first woman to argue before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, also a victory for her client. The four Piers were among the first 20 women admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court bar, though none of the Wisconsin women argued before that court. To further their feminist mission, “these first twenty women began to move each others’ applications for admission to the Supreme Court bar,” wrote Mary Clark in “The First Women Members of the Supreme Court Bar, 1879-1900." The younger Kate was part of that process, successfully moving to admit her mother and sisters to the U.S. Supreme Court bar. “Regardless of their aspirations to practice in the Supreme Court, these women were motivated to join the bar at least in part by their commitment to furthering opportunities for women. … Their roles as ‘first women’ in the law—attending and establishing law schools, holding positions within the legal profession previously closed to women, and joining bars—reflected and refined their consciousness of breaking down barriers for women in the legal profession. For them, joining the Supreme Court bar was another in a series of steps towards eliminating impediments to women’s participation in the legal profession.” A matter of appearances For its part, The Ladies’ Home Journal observed that the Piers were all “feminine” women who had lost “none of their womanly qualities.” Mrs. Pier was described as a handsome woman whose face “indicates a strong and sweet character, which would temper justice with mercy.” “Miss Kate is very beautiful,” the article continued. “It may be of interest to feminine readers to know that Miss Pier wore, when she plead and won her first case at Madison, a pretty black silk dress, brightened with a bit of color at her throat. It must have been a strange scene, when five most ‘potent, grave and reverend seigniors’ listened to a slip of a girl as she plead her case, and plead it well and with convincing power.” Caroline and Harriet, new members of the family law firm, were also described as pretty girls, “at whom one gladly looks twice.”
Photographs of the September 1892 edition of The Ladies' Home Journal by Amy Rabideau Silvers. Indeed, it was not only the ladies’ magazine that covered matters of personal appearance during court appearances. The Milwaukee Daily Journal, reporting in 1889 on the younger Kate’s Wisconsin Supreme Court appearance, headlined one item “Raving Over a Lady Attorney.” “She is a beautiful girl, little over 20 years of age, a brunette, with bewitching eyes and very heavy lashes, but her striking feature is her splendid black hair, which falls nearly to the floor in a massive braid,” it read. Nowhere in that hundred-plus-word report did it mention the name of the case or other legal details. The Milwaukee Journal report on her case before the Court of Appeals did only slightly better, at least noting the case in question. “For several hours she compelled the attention of Judges Woods, Baker and Seaman, who sat in begowned dignity while Miss Pier expounded law principles,” it recounted. “The fair pleader wore a tightly-fitting gown of black velvet, with a big American Beauty rose pinned on her breast. The case was a personal damage suit against the Crane Elevator company, which Miss Pier won for her client in the lower court, but which the company appealed.” The appeals court upheld the verdict in Crane Elevator Co. v. Lippert. Kate’s client was a 15-year-old employee of the Western Union Telegraph Co., seriously injured after he fell navigating a dark hallway—no gas jets were lit—where the elevator company had left components during a replacement project. Early family life Colwert K. Pier (aka C.K. Pier), was born into a Fond du Lac County pioneer family. His future wife, Kate Hamilton, was born in Vermont in 1845 and later grew up in Fond du Lac, where she taught for three years after graduating high school. “Her first job was teaching school in the town of Empire. Here she received her board and $5 a month,” according to an obituary after her death in 1925. She next taught in the Fond du Lac schools, where high post-Civil War inflation helped push her wages to $22.50 a month. C.K. returned to his law practice after serving in the Union Army, and the two married in 1866. After the death of her father, Mrs. Pier began handling the estate left to her and her mother, which led to others asking her help on real estate matters. “Inheriting an estate from her father while she was still young, circumstances developed Mrs. Pier into one of the pioneer business women of Wisconsin,” an obituary said. “She had training in real estate in her father’s office … and in the bank and law office in which her husband was interested.” So when her oldest daughter wanted to attend law school, Mrs. Pier had reason to think a law degree could be useful to her, too. The Piers move to Milwaukee After graduating, the women returned to Fond du Lac and began practicing law. In 1888, the Pier family moved to Milwaukee, a more likely spot to support their burgeoning family of lawyers. Daughter Kate worked in the Wisconsin Central Railroad’s law department for a year before joining the family firm. C.K. died in 1895. The Pier women continued to practice. Mrs. Pier’s official duties as court commissioner came to include officiating at the weddings of daughters Caroline and Harriet. The elder Kate died in Fond du Lac at the age of 80. Daughter Kate married railroad contractor James Alexander McIntosh in 1901, moving to New York City and quitting her law practice. After her husband’s death in 1916, she returned to Fond du Lac, where she assumed management of the family’s real estate and was again involved in the legal community, including the Wisconsin Bar Committee on Women Lawyers. She died in 1931. Caroline Hamilton Pier married attorney John Roemer in 1897. As a young lawyer, she specialized in maritime and admiralty law. She died in 1938. Harriet Hamilton Pier specialized in real estate law and argued before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. She married Charles G. Simonds, an electrical engineer, in 1905, and later lived in Rhinelander. “There is probably no woman in the state who has a better idea of the lands of northern Wisconsin than Mrs. C.G. Simonds … who, although residing in Milwaukee, spends much time in the wilds of the north,” reported The Milwaukee Sentinel in 1919. “She is also considered an expert in judging lands and her advice is frequently sought.” An obituary in 1943 called her a pioneer timber cruiser (riding trains to estimate timber value), conservationist, philanthropist, and, of course, one of Wisconsin’s first women lawyers. All were “demonstrating most clearly that they are qualified to rank with men in the learned and honored profession of law,” opined The Ladies’ Home Journal article. “It is not probable that any one of these young ladies is unfitted for a home because she has identified herself with an unusual calling for a woman. Only a few years ago, if a woman found it necessary to work for a living, as she often did (apparently suffering both the curse of Adam and Eve) there was no career open to her save school-teaching or dress-making. Now, as a progressive woman says, ‘she can do anything where her petticoats do not catch in the machinery.’”  This project is supported by grants from   Wisconsin Justice Initiative recently asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court, director of state courts, and members of the State Capitol and Executive Residence Board (SCERB), to display new artwork in the State Capitol courtroom to reflect diversity in the judiciary, bar, and public. SCERB is the state board that controls renovations and installations of fixtures, decorative items, and furnishings in the Capitol building. The Wisconsin Constitution and opinions of the Wisconsin Supreme Court apply to all Wisconsinites and shape the state's legal system and citizens’ rights. Yet the chamber in which the Supreme Court sits to interpret the state’s constitution and statutes reflects an outdated world that fails to include more than half of Wisconsin's population. None of the courtroom’s murals includes a woman, and the only people of color are defendants in a murder trial and some possibly mixed-race men as jurors. Of note, in that murder trial the judge's decision was based on his belief that the primary defendant, Chief Oshkosh, was not “an intelligent conscious being" under the law. All of the portraits and busts in the courtroom’s vestibule are of white men. This year marks the 150th anniversary of admission of the first woman, Lavinia Goodell, to law practice in Wisconsin. In its letters to SCERB and the court, WJI urged them to recognize the anniversary by adding to the vestibule walls portraits of the court’s female chief justices — Shirley Abrahamson, Patience Roggensack, and Annette Ziegler. WJI also asked SCERB and the court to commission two new busts for the vestibule or hearing room: one of a woman and one of a person of color. WJI suggested Goodell and William T. Green. Green was the first Black lawyer in Milwaukee and fought for civil rights through legislation, court cases, and community organizing. WJI published blog articles about Goodell and Green as part of its “Unsung Heroes” series about women and people of color who contributed to Wisconsin legal history but whose stories have not adequately been heard and acknowledged.
Supreme Court hearing room murals and vestibule. Photographs by Margo Kirchner.
By Amy Rabideau Silvers  Meta Berger in 1910. Photograph courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society. Image 52054. More than a decade before the 19th Amendment gave American women the right to vote, Meta Berger was elected as one of the first women to serve on the Milwaukee School Board. She came to politics through her famous husband, Victor Berger, a leader in the Socialist Party. That was not enough to prepare her when the party nominated her as a candidate in the 1909 school board race, just seven years after women in Wisconsin won the right to vote in school board elections. She was, in her own words, “surprised, shocked and frightened.” Meta wired her husband, asking him what to do. “Do nothing, except to accept the honor,” came the answer. “You won’t be elected anyway.” But win she did, part of a wave of Socialist victories that put her reform-minded party in control of local politics. She ran again despite her husband’s reservations. “When I am alone and thinking the matter over—then it always comes to me again that I don’t want either you or the children to take a prominent part in public life,” he once wrote. “You are not adapted to it at all … although (I am sorry to say) that you have acquired a little taste for it through your work on the school board. When your term is over I don’t want you to run again.” Meta ran and won reelection, going on to serve 30 years on the board, including as its president from 1915-1916. She also apparently won her husband’s acceptance of her political role, evident in a letter he wrote to one of their daughters. “Sometimes I wonder whether you girls sufficiently prize the fact that your mother is the first women in America who has ever achieved the honor of being elected president of a school board. And the first Socialist president at that … man or woman.” Through it all, Meta lived her Socialist values. “As a school director, Meta supported progressive measures such as playground construction, 'penny lunches,' free textbooks, and medical inspection of schoolchildren,” according to Kimberly Swanson in the introduction to a memoir written by Meta in the last year of her life. It was published as A Milwaukee Woman’s Life on the Left / The Autobiography of Meta Berger, edited by Swanson and published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press in 2001. “She was also a teachers’ advocate and worked for their tenure, a firm salary schedule, and a pension system,” Swanson continued in her introduction. “Though she was not always successful in her efforts—she failed, for example, in her attempt to provide free textbooks—her fellow school directors nonetheless respected her ‘clear thinking, fresh interest and enthusiasm.’” One victory came at her very first school board meeting. “My fear left me even before the close of the meeting over a question which had aroused my interest and indignation,” Meta wrote in her memoir. “The board was going to discriminate against women by ruling that no woman, no matter how qualified, could become the head of a department in any high school course and was going to replace a woman who had served in such a capacity for a number of years. … “I forgot everything except that I must defend women and their rights, so made my first speech in the school board. It must have been pretty good for I won the fight and women there-after could hold positions equal in rank with men.” Early life—and a political awakening Meta was born in 1873 to a Milwaukee couple, Bernhard and Matilda Schlichting, who came to America from Germany as children. Her father briefly served as a Republican in the state Legislature and then in an appointed position with the Milwaukee schools. Perhaps most importantly in Meta’s life, he also hired a young immigrant, Victor Berger, to teach German classes. Victor proved a friend to the family after Bernhard’s death in 1883. The family struggled financially, with her mother taking in boarders. Meta graduated from the Wisconsin State Normal School, a forerunner to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, in 1894. She taught for three years before resigning her position to marry Victor, 13 years her senior, in 1897. Their marriage proved a loving relationship but not without its struggles, emotional and otherwise. Victor was an opinionated, sometimes volatile man. The family’s finances were often precarious at best, including as Victor struggled to keep his newspapers afloat and accomplish the work of the Socialist Party. “Soon a change in my life took place,” Meta wrote in her memoir. “My husband came home saying he was to attend a Socialist national convention in Chicago (in 1904) within a few days. Again I felt I was left behind. … without saying a word I determined to attend that convention too. I didn’t know quite yet how it was to be managed, but go I would.” She managed to do just that, turning up much to her husband’s amazement. “The convention was a turning point in my life,” she wrote. “I was so interested, so excited, so fired with enthusiasm when I heard those scholarly speeches and arguments, some of which I understood and some I didn’t. But the general drift of the purpose of the convention slowly drifted into my consciousness.” Meta resolved to attend all conventions with her husband, becoming increasingly active, which led to her school board nomination. Other notable roles followed, including appointments to the Wisconsin State Board of Education (1917-1918), the Wisconsin Board of Regents of Normal Schools (1927-1928), and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents (1928-1934). Meta grew in confidence, someone who would voice her own opinions in all kinds of settings, as she did at her first meeting as a normal schools regent. Budgets, she then said, were being figured too closely, schools allowed to deteriorate. The board was “trying to shield the poor legislators by not being too hard on them in our requests.” “I for one would go before them and put the responsibility squarely on their shoulder. If we maintain a fire-trap then the refusal for the money to repair such conditions must be theirs,” the new regent told her fellow board members. “I guess I threw a bomb alright enough. The whole board was up in arms at once and didn’t know just what to do with such an unruly member.” She was actively involved in the suffrage and peace movements, although she sometimes felt a level of scrutiny for her Socialist ways and found those activists to be “well meaning but not courageous.” “Socialist women—even those of middle-class origin, like Meta—identified with the working class and questioned economic arrangements … (and) social traditions,” Swanson said in her writing. “She demonstrated her commitment to expanding women’s roles through her educational and suffrage work, for example, by defending the right of married women to teach,” according to Swanson. “She once criticized a fellow Socialist for making a ‘purely moral’ argument in favor of woman suffrage, meaning that she disapproved of arguments for change based solely on supposed moral differences between men and women. A firm proponent of equal rights, Meta may have sensed that emphasizing differences hindered rather than furthered women’s integration into public life.” Washington and wartime politics In 1910, Victor Berger was elected to the U.S. Congress on the Socialist ticket, necessitating the family’s move to Washington, D.C. “My husband had to resign as alderman in order to represent the Fifth District of Wisconsin in Washington,” according to Meta. “Now not only local problems but national problems were brought into the home. … Naturally everyone in the whole country wanted to know who this lone Socialist congressman elect was and what he was like.” He served until 1913 but was elected again in 1918. Nothing about that victory proved simple. Victor was elected after his indictment under the Espionage Act of 1917, passed soon after the U.S. entered what is now called World War I. His fellow congressmen refused to allow him to take his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Victor and four other defendants were tried in federal court in Chicago. Victor was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Then they learned the conditions for bail pending an appeal. Each man would be released only on $100,000 bond, secured by unencumbered real estate in Illinois. The bail would have to be raised within hours, by the end of the day, or they would be taken to prison. Meta and their Socialist Party friends began raising money. “We began at once to telephone friends and known liberals,” Meta wrote. “I had to call up perfect strangers and say something like this … ‘I am the wife of Victor Berger who was sentenced to serve twenty years in the penitentiary. My husband and the four other defendants must go to prison tonight unless we can raise the sum of $500,000 in unencumbered real-estate. I am told that possibly you would be willing to sign for part of the bond. Will you? Will you keep five men out of prison, pending an appeal of the case?’” The effort worked, with supporters helping to raise more than the $500,000 needed. “We finally got back to the office of the bonding clerk to discover the room filled with people, the legal looking deeds to their property held in their hands or protruding from their pockets,” she said in her writing. A few quick postscripts are in order here. Congress declared Victor’s seat open, necessitating a special election late in 1919. He won with even more votes, but again Congress refused to seat him. Yet another election followed, and Milwaukee voters finally choose a non-Berger candidate to be represented in Washington. In 1921, the conviction was voided by the U.S. Supreme Court, which found that the judge, who had publicly made anti-German and anti-Socialist remarks, should not have heard the case. Victor ran again for Congress, serving from 1923 to 1929.  Meta Berger circa 1925. Photograph courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society. Image 123868. The final chapters Meta became a widow during the summer of 1929. Her husband was struck by a streetcar while crossing the street outside his newspaper office. He died of his injuries three weeks later. Victor Berger’s body lay in state at Milwaukee City Hall, and 75,000 people came to pay their respects. In the following decade, Meta did not hew to the official Socialist Party lines. She explored Communist affiliations and friendships, even traveling to Russia, though she never joined the Communist Party. While the Socialist Party had long had its own philosophies and factions, Meta’s actions were no longer acceptable. In 1940, after she was asked to withdraw from “communist-front” organizations, she instead chose to resign from her longtime party. She died in 1944 at a family home in Thiensville. “Meta Schlichting Berger served her community and her country, as well as her husband and family, by helping to shape her century for the better,” wrote historian Genevieve G. McBride in the forward to Meta’s memoir. “There is no better testament to a life lived well, nor to the lessons she left for the next generation.”  This project is supported by grants from   By Amy Rabideau Silvers  Photograph of Mabel Raimey from the 1919 Badger yearbook. University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries and Archives, local indicator no. 2017s00539. No doubt Mabel Watson Raimey could identify with the Negro College Fund’s famous slogan declaring that “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” The iconic slogan first appeared in 1972. In the early decades of her life, Raimey was repeatedly told that women and Black people could not do the kinds of things she wanted to do. She finally became a lawyer, establishing her own legal practice proudly serving both Black and white clients in probate and business matters. She grew up in Milwaukee, the daughter of Nellie Cora Watson Raimey and Anthony Van Leer Raimey, with roots to one of the first African American families in the city. Her great-grandparents, Sully and Susanna Watson, freed slaves who fled pre-Civil War Virginia, settled in Milwaukee and bought property by 1851. Mabel was born in 1895 and graduated from West Division High School at age 14. When she told the family physician that she wanted to be a doctor, that early diploma apparently meant little. As Raimey later recalled, he told her that “medicine would be too hard” and “women couldn’t handle the studies.” Young Mabel instead began preparing for the more traditional profession of teacher, first attending the Milwaukee Normal School, a forerunner of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, before transferring to the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She graduated in 1918—believed to be the first African American woman to graduate from the university—and soon accepted a teaching position with the Milwaukee schools. The job lasted three days. Raimey, who was very light-skinned, was called into the principal’s office and asked if she was a Negro. She was summarily dismissed by an administrator who seemed more amused than apologetic about the hiring “mistake.” If that was not enough of an insult, Raimey heard a secretary giggle and turned to find the principal making a face behind her back, something she would never forget. She found new employment as a legal secretary for a downtown lawyer. In 1922, Raimey enrolled in night classes at Marquette University Law School, but continued to work her day job. While historians now believe that she was the first Black woman to complete law school in Wisconsin, she later acknowledged keeping her silence on the subject of race. “Nobody asked me,” she said. “I never told.” “Thus, we have the potential law student, Mabel Raimey—discouraged from medicine because of sexism—prevented from teaching because of racism,” wrote Phoebe Weaver Williams, Marquette University emerita law professor, in a piece about Raimey. “Upon entering law school, she had already experienced the double jeopardy faced by women of color.” For Raimey, gender may have proved a more obvious and formidable barrier than race. She continued working as a legal secretary before beginning to practice law in that office. She was admitted to the Wisconsin Bar in 1927 and, over time, developed her own practice. (A quick historical note: It would be decades before the second black woman was admitted to the Wisconsin Bar. That was Vel Phillips, who graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1951.) Nothing about that career path was easy to navigate in Raimey’s time. “When she entered law school, there were few white women practicing law in the state,” according to a State Bar of Wisconsin legal history, “Pioneers in the Law: The First 150 Women.” “There were fewer, if any, African American male lawyers, and there were no African American female lawyers,” it continued. “In 1911 the American Bar Association had barred Blacks from membership, a barrier it would not remove until 1943.” Wrote Williams: “During interviews and speeches she repeatedly admonished younger women to set high goals, and ‘never [use] sex or race as an excuse not to attain these goals.’” Raimey also served as a leader in the community, including as a founding member and longtime board member of the Milwaukee Urban League. She served on the YWCA board and was a founder of the Milwaukee Northside YWCA. She became a charter member of the Epsilon Kappa Omega Chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. In more recent decades, Raimey’s role in Wisconsin legal history has been recognized in public and permanent ways. A historic marker stands on the Marquette University campus.  Photograph by Margo Kirchner “Professionally, it was always my intention to serve all people, regardless of race, color, creed, or economic ability, in a fair and just manner,” Raimey said, as she accepted an award from the Black Law Students Association at Marquette. “If my acceptance and completion of law school at Marquette University in the 1920s has inspired or encouraged anyone to enter the field of law, I am pleased. If any accomplishment that I may have made has had any influence on any young people, I am pleased more.” She continued working until suffering a stroke in 1972. It happened while she was bathing, alone in her apartment. Friends found her after five long days that she survived by drinking water from the tub. She died in 1986. In September 2022, members of the sorority chapter gathered for a special ceremony at Raimey’s grave at Forest Home Cemetery. She was the last surviving member of her family, and the burial site had never been graced with a headstone. Her sorority sisters, dressed in white, dedicated a two-sided monument complete with her portrait and accomplishments. “As Alpha Kappa Alpha women, our chapter considers today a true honor to pause and place an exclamation point on Raimey’s service, community impact, and trailblazing legacy,” declared Debra Brown-Wallace, chapter president. “Now with a proper headstone, Raimey can be an inspiration of future generations to come.”
This project is supported by grants from Wisconsin legal historian Joseph Ranney joined WJI at its virtual June Salon for a fascinating talk on post-Civil War civil rights laws across the nation and in particular here in Wisconsin. Ranney is an adjunct professor at Marquette Law School and the author of several books and articles on Wisconsin and American legal history, including Trusting Nothing to Providence: A History of Wisconsin's Legal System and Wisconsin and the Shaping of American Law. He is working on a history of civil rights law in the Northern and Western states from colonial times to 1968. Ranney's talk relates to WJI's Unsung Heroes blog series on women and people of color whose impacts on Wisconsin legal history deserve more attention. Ranney discusses, among others, two men profiled in the series: Ezekiel Gillespie, who fought for the right to vote for Wisconsin's Black men, and William T. Green, who as an attorney worked to enforce civil rights. Unsung hero: Belle Case La Follette fought for suffrage, civil rights and progressive reforms4/20/2023 By Amy Rabideau Silvers  Belle Case La Follette circa 1924. Wisconsin Historical Society, Image 55358. While Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette may now be the more familiar name to Wisconsin ears, his wife should be regarded as an equally remarkable person in Wisconsin law and progressive politics. Her name was Belle Case La Follette. In 1885, she became the first woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin Law School, starting law school after she was already a wife and mother. She earlier helped husband Bob with his studies and then with legal briefs, including one brief in the 1890s “that broke new legal ground and won his case before the state’s supreme court,” according to an article by historian Nancy Unger in the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Wisconsin Magazine of History. “Justice William P. Lyon complimented Bob on the brief,” Unger explained, speaking in an interview with the Wisconsin Justice Initiative. Bob La Follette proudly and matter-of-factly told the court that his wife had written it. Belle La Follette never formally practiced law, but she practiced plenty of activism. She wrote, lectured and agitated for progressive causes, including women’s suffrage, child labor reform and racial justice. In 1909, her husband began La Follette’s Weekly, later La Follette’s Magazine and now The Progressive. Belle La Follette served as its first editor and as columnist, expanding the boundaries of what was considered appropriate for women readers. Her writing was nationally syndicated as brief “Thought for the Day” articles in newspapers in 20 states. “She was a tremendous voice for women’s suffrage,” Unger says. “She was instrumental in women getting the vote and changing minds.” In 1912, that included testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Women’s Suffrage, where she declared that suffrage was “a simple matter of common sense.” “You know how Lincoln defined government at Gettysburg. ‘Ours is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people,’” she said. “And are not women people?” That same year, she went on one of her barnstorming tours for suffrage, giving 31 speeches in 12 days across 14 Wisconsin counties. In 1914, she spoke for 63 consecutive days in states including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan.  Belle La Follette, circa 1915, addressing a group of farmers while on a speaking tour that often involved the topic of women's suffrage. Wisconsin Historical Society, Image 2415. Belle La Follette and friends listened from the Senate gallery as the Nineteenth Amendment was approved on June 4, 1919. Her next action was likely one of the reasons that Wisconsin became the first state to officially ratify on June 10, 1919. She sent telegrams to representatives back home with the news. Once ratified, then-Sen. Bob La Follette announced Wisconsin’s vote and had it read into the Congressional Record. (For the record, Illinois technically passed a resolution first, but that was found to be invalid.) “And it was no mere state pride that caused me to thrill with joy when Mr. La Follette made the announcement in the Senate,” she later wrote in La Follette’s Magazine. “It was the conviction that a great service had been rendered. With Wisconsin as an example—an object lesson—ratifying so speedily, almost unanimously, the opposition was beaten at the very beginning of the race—left dashed and hopeless at the very start!” The Nineteenth Amendment became law in 1920. “And now the 17 million women of the United States are fully enfranchised,” Belle La Follette wrote in celebration. “… For the first time in American history, women may vote in every state in the Union for candidates for all offices ... and women may hold any office now held by men, whether appointive or elective.” The new constitutional amendment meant that the University of Wisconsin’s first female law graduate could finally vote. She was 61. A progressive family tree Belle Case was born in 1859 in Summit, Wisconsin, the daughter of Anson and Mary Nesbit Case, and grew up in Baraboo. Her mother was moved by a lecture on women’s suffrage and spoke to her children about such matters. Her parents valued education, including for their only daughter. An eager and brilliant student, Belle was accepted at the University of Wisconsin, which was where she caught the eye and heart of a student named Bob. After graduation, she taught for two years before agreeing to marry in 1881. At Belle Case’s request, the Unitarian minister omitted the word obey from their marriage vows.
They were true partners in life and progressive politics. During his long career, her husband served as Dane County district attorney, congressman, private attorney, three-time governor of Wisconsin, and U.S. senator, as well as founder of La Follette’s Weekly and as a Progressive Party presidential candidate. Belle La Follette is credited with some measure of his success, sharing her progressive arguments, legal skills and political savvy through the years. She was, Bob La Follette declared in his autobiography, his “wisest and best counsellor.” He also spoke of “when we were governor.” “And though she did not enjoy all of the trappings that came with being a politician’s wife (she particularly hated Washington small talk), she saw great value in women becoming politically aware,” according to Unger, a professor at Santa Clara University, who has written extensively about the La Follettes, including two books that received Book of Merit Awards by the Wisconsin Historical Society. “She urged all women to recognize that the problems they thought of as personal were in fact political and therefore required women’s political activism.” After her husband’s death in 1925, La Follette was asked to finish his term in the U.S. Senate, which would have made her the first woman to actually serve as senator. (Rebecca Latimer Felton, 87, of Georgia, was sworn in as a member of the Senate in 1922. She served just one day. No woman would be elected until 1932.) La Follette declined and son Robert La Follette Jr. ran instead. For the ever-practical and political Belle, it made sense to have someone younger take up the family’s progressive banner. Robert Jr. served more than 20 years in the Senate; another son, Phil, was elected Wisconsin governor three times. She also encouraged her daughter-in-law, Isabel “Isen” Bacon La Follette, to give her opinion of a draft platform by husband Phil as he began running for governor, according to an article by historian Bernard A. Weisberger in the Wisconsin Magazine of History. Belle La Follette did not buy Isen’s argument that she knew nothing of politics. “You are an intelligent woman,” Belle La Follette told Isen. “If what Phil writes doesn’t appeal to you, rest assured it will not appeal to others.” True to her convictions La Follette continued her writing and speaking, advocating on a wide variety of issues for the rest of her life. For reasons of health and comfort, she gave up corsets and stays and told other women they should, too. She believed in exercise for all, including women. Women should not, La Follette contended, have to change their names when they marry. She decried racial injustice, speaking before and in support of Black communities and making headlines for it. “She Defends Negroes—Wife of Senator La Follette Denounces Segregation—Says U.S. Government Errs,” read a 1914 front-page story in The Washington Post. “It seems strange,” she once wrote, “that the very ones who consider it a hardship to sit next [to] a colored person in a streetcar, entrust their children to colored nurses, and eat food prepared by colored hands.” Civil rights activist Nannie Helen Burroughs introduced her as “the successor of Harriet Beecher Stowe.” La Follette also supported rights and respect for American Indians. La Follette especially deplored violence in all forms, from corporal punishment for children to capital punishment for crime. She was a founder of the Women’s Peace Party, which later became the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Former President Theodore Roosevelt was outraged by its public stance, writing a scathing assessment of the WPP and calling it cowardly and foolish. Unger tells what happens next. “Belle La Follette fired back in La Follette’s Magazine that Roosevelt assumed ‘that War is the only means of settling international differences and moreover that War is bound to settle them right. … History demonstrates that [even] imperfect and temporary plans of mediation, conciliation, and arbitration have been more effective than war in securing justice ….’” “Was Christ cowardly? How long did the agitation against human slavery last before it was abolished?” La Follette wrote. A legacy hailed and then long forgotten Belle La Follette died in 1931. She was 72. She rated obituaries in newspapers across the country, including The New York Times, which called her perhaps “the most influential of all American women who have had to do with public affairs in this country.” Mostly, though, her life was told through the lens of “the little woman behind the great man,” according to Unger. “Only a few go so far as to recognize her as an important reformer in her own right.” In 1993, the State Bar of Wisconsin’s charitable arm, the Wisconsin Law Foundation, began its Belle Case La Follette Awards in recognition of her accomplishments. The annual awards now honor three bar members working in Wisconsin and representing underserved populations, one each from the UW Law School, Marquette University Law School and an out-of-state law school, said Joe Forward, communications director for the State Bar. La Follette was, at heart, a bit of a homebody and somewhat shy, but she believed in standing up and speaking out, something she thought all citizens should do. Perhaps more than her politician husband could, she claimed a measure of greater freedom in pushing progressive ideas, says Unger. “She’s a bit like Eleanor Roosevelt,” Unger says. “She wielded tremendous influence as a journalist and public speaker, and the nation improved because she did. She didn’t pull any punches in her sweet ladylike way.” This project is supported by grants from |
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