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January 29, 1926 · Law & Civic Leadership

Admitted to the Nation’s Highest Bar

The Supreme Court admitted Chicago attorney Violette N. Anderson to practice before the Court—the first Black woman to join its bar.

See the Court record

Then

Race and sex sharply constrained who could enter the legal profession and its highest institutions.

Now

Anderson’s admission remains a landmark in the history of Black women in American law.

Next

Access to a bar is an opening; equal opportunity to build a career and shape the law is the larger work.

The Court record

A precise line in the journal. A historic threshold.

The Supreme Court’s journal for Friday, January 29, 1926 records that “Violette N. Anderson, of Chicago, Ill.” and O. E. Swan of Muskogee, Oklahoma, “were admitted to practice.” That concise institutional record establishes the date and the legal event.

Supreme Court Historical Society scholarship identifies Anderson as the first African American woman admitted to the Supreme Court bar. Admission made her eligible to practice before the Court, but it does not mean that she argued a case there.

Anderson’s milestone belonged to a wider career in Chicago law and civic leadership. She had worked as a court reporter before entering legal practice and later served as an assistant prosecutor. Her professional life widened the visible place of Black women within American law.

Born in London and raised in Chicago, Anderson pursued education while working. She attended the Chicago Seminar of Sciences and later Chicago Law School, earning her law degree in 1920. She established a practice with her husband, Albert Johnson, and handled criminal and civil matters. Her appointment as an assistant prosecutor made her one of the first Black women to hold that role in Chicago.

Supreme Court bar admission required sponsorship and evidence of good standing in another court. The achievement recognized professional qualification within an institution that had long excluded both Black attorneys and women. Charlotte E. Ray had become the first Black woman lawyer in the United States in 1872, but decades passed before a Black woman entered the Supreme Court’s bar.

Anderson also served as an officer in the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs and became a leader of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority. She supported federal anti-lynching legislation, linking legal profession to organized protection of Black life. In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt appointed her to an advisory role connected to the United States Virgin Islands.

January 29 honors access to the nation’s highest court as one step in a larger life of law and service. Admission did not guarantee a Supreme Court argument or remove discrimination from the profession. It placed Anderson’s name in the Court’s official record and widened the recognized community of attorneys entitled to appear there. Her achievement joined preparation, credentialing, civic organization, and persistent entry into institutions that had not imagined Black women as legal authorities.

The journal’s brief notation is powerful precisely because it is official. A few lines preserve the date, place, and professional act, allowing later generations to verify a barrier-breaking achievement without exaggerating what admission meant.

DATE

January 29, 1926

The Court’s contemporaneous journal is the primary evidence for the admission.

MILESTONE

First Black woman

Historical scholarship identifies Anderson as the first African American woman to join the Supreme Court bar.

LEGAL MEANING

Eligible to practice

Bar admission authorized practice before the Court. It was not itself an oral argument.

Then → Now → Next

Opening the profession’s doors.

Admission

Anderson crossed an institutional threshold at a time when Black women faced overlapping barriers in education, hiring, and professional recognition.

Argument

Constance Baker Motley later became the first Black woman to argue before the Supreme Court, a separate milestone documented by the Court’s Historical Society.

Participation

The continuing measure is not only who may enter, but who receives opportunities to advocate, lead, judge, and influence the law.

Evidence ledger

Sources & verification

Terminology matters: This entry says Anderson was admitted to the Supreme Court bar. It does not claim she argued before the Court. Those are different achievements.
  1. Supreme Court of the United States — October Term 1925 Journal, page 173: primary record of Anderson’s January 29 admission.
  2. Journal of Supreme Court History — “Women as Supreme Court Advocates, 1879–1979”: identifies Anderson as the first African American woman admitted to the Court’s bar.
  3. Supreme Court Historical Society — Constance Baker Motley: documents the distinct first involving oral argument.
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