There are three questions students of history should always
ask:
- What’s the context?
- What’s the context?
- What’s the context?
Yes, I know, it’s a play on the old real estate joke
(location, location, location), but the importance of understanding how a quote
or an event sits in terms of what’s happening around it cannot be overstated.
I could now summon all-too-common examples of people cutting
and pasting selective quotes from the Founders about religion or passages from
the Quran about jihad.
But those are third-rail topics that always trigger intense
argument. Instead, I’ll illustrate my point with something seemingly benign
that I heard today on the radio while driving into work. It was one of those
“On This Day in History” items:
On Feb. 15. 1879, President Rutherford B. Hayes signed a bill allowing
female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court.
Well, isn’t that nice? And taken out of context, it suggests
that women “made it” long before they actually did. It also suggests that it
all came about because those great defenders of rights, Rutherford B. Hayes and
the members of the 45th Congress, decided to do the right thing.
When we take our history in little doses of factoids doled out like pieces of
candy, we lose the facility for critical questioning that is essential both to
understand history and to be effective citizens.
And here’s a short list of facts that might be considered
alongside the item above:
- The law passed through the singular efforts of
Belva Ann Lockwood, who lobbied Congress for five years to get it passed.
- When Lockwood completed her studies at National
University Law School (now George Washington Law School), the school refused to
grant her a diploma because she was female.
- Earlier, in 1870, Ada Kepley became the first
American woman to graduate from law school. Although she had a diploma from the
Union College of Law (now Northwestern), the state of Illinois denied her a
license to practice law. That law wasn’t overturned until 1881. Not one to be
defeated, Kepley went on to earn a Ph.D. as well.
- In more progressive Iowa, Arabella “Belle” Mansfield
became the first American woman admitted to the bar, in 1869.
- And just because a handful of women were
fighting incredible opposition to work as lawyers doesn’t mean women even
enjoyed the vote. In 1872, the year before Belva Lockwood finished law school,
Susan B. Anthony was arrested in New York for voting—illegally, of course—in
that year’s presidential election.
- It would be another 40 years after Hayes signed
this bill for ratification of the 19th Amendment that guaranteed
women the right to vote.
- Women wouldn’t be admitted to Harvard Law School
until 1950.
- The first woman wouldn’t be nominated for the
U.S. Supreme Court until 1981.
- Of the 112 justices who have sat on the Supreme
Court, 108 have been men.
- According to the American Bar Association, only
32 percent of all attorneys in the United States are women (as of 2008), and
they earn, on average, only 77.5 percent of the typical salary of a male lawyer
(in 2004).
And that is context.
Costello is director
of Teaching Tolerance.
