Category Archives: Activism

Amabel Anderson Arnold LL.M. was an American lawyer and law professor who received degrees from both Benton College of Law and City College of Law and Finance within a five-day period. On July 15, 1912, Anderson and her fellow St. Louis women attorneys organized the Woman’s State Bar Association of Missouri, the first association of women lawyers in the world. Caroline G. Thummel was the President. Prior to her law career, in 1907 she opened and managed for 6 years the Arnold Preparatory School for men and women whose early education had been neglected. Anderson and her assistants tutored them privately and placed them in nearly every department of every college and university in St. Louis and in other cities. Anderson built for herself a lasting name as a competent and modern teacher. While operating the school, Anderson also accepted a position as instructor of Latin in the Dental Department of the Saint Louis University in 1908, the only woman in the faculty. She was also a professor of medical botany at the American Medical College – again, the only woman instructor. Law and teaching came together in September 1913, when Anderson was elected director of the Woman’s Department at the University of Chicago Law School, the first woman to hold such an office in the United States. In 1914 Anderson was appointed to the regular faculty of the City College of Law and Finance as lecturer and instructor in the chair of International Law – once again, the only woman to hold such a position in St. Louis.
Anderson was also an advocate of the Equal Rights Amendment and women’s suffrage; she was a charter member of the Equal Suffrage League (St. Louis), and sent out the first invitations to business women, asking them to meet to consider the organization of a league to further suffrage.