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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Lena Olive Smith: A Minnesota Civil Rights Pioneer, Ann Juergens
Lena Olive Smith: A Minnesota Civil Rights Pioneer, Ann Juergens
Faculty Scholarship
Lena Olive Smith and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) created a spirited partnership in the public interest during the 1920s and 1930s. Throughout their long collaboration, this woman lawyer, her clients, and the Minneapolis branch of a national grassroots organization faced similar challenges: to stay solvent, to end segregation and increase equality, and to live with dignity. This article is divided into four sections. The first three roughly correspond with stages in Smith’s life and work. Part II briefly chronicles Smith’s first thirty six years, 1885 to 1921, as a single African-American woman in the …
Alice In Legal Wonderland: A Cross-Examination Of Gender, Race And Empire In Victorian Law And Literature, Kristin (Brandser) Kalsem
Alice In Legal Wonderland: A Cross-Examination Of Gender, Race And Empire In Victorian Law And Literature, Kristin (Brandser) Kalsem
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
Lewis Carroll's 1865 scene of a recalcitrant Alice in the courtroom, defying the court's authority as she grows (literally) into a large and threatening presence, dramatizes what was becoming an increasingly common Victorian spectacle: a woman questioning and critiquing the law and claiming a place for herself within its institutions. Women have played a significant (but much overlooked) role in legal history and, in this paper, I argue for the importance of examining various narratives of the past (including literary accounts) that explored women's relationship to the law.
Against the backdrop of several legal cases in which women sought entry …