Law Archives - Infinite Women

Rose Matsui Ochi

While serving as a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow for the Western Center on Law and Poverty she won the landmark educational law reform case, Serrano v. Priest, serving as the co-counsel of record.

Rosalie Wahl was a pioneering figure in Minnesota law during the second half of the twentieth century. She became the state’s first female Supreme Court justice at a time when there were no women on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Martha Dorsett

Martha Angle Dorsett is best known for being Minnesota’s first female lawyer. After being denied the right to practice law in Minnesota in 1876, she successfully petitioned the Minnesota legislature to change the state law governing attorney admissions. With the law amended to permit admission regardless of sex, Martha went on to practice law and remained active politically throughout the rest of her life in Minneapolis.

Mabeth Hurd Paige

In 1922, Mabeth Hurd Paige became one of the first four women to be elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives.

Lena Olive Smith

Lena Olive Smith was a prominent civil rights lawyer and activist during the 1920s and 1930s.

Emily Grey

Best known for initiating the effort to free an enslaved woman named Eliza Winston in 1860, she weathered mob violence for her efforts. She rebuilt her home and business after the incident and lived in Minneapolis for the remainder of her life.

Toki Wakayama

The Wakayama case was a wartime test case that challenged the detention of Japanese Americans forcibly removed from the West Coast.

Sue Shelton White

Suffragist, lawyer, leader of the National Woman’s Party in Tennessee

Irene Morgan

On July 16, 1944, Irene Morgan refused to surrender her seat to white passengers and move to the back of a Greyhound bus while traveling from Gloucester County, Virginia, to Baltimore, Maryland. She was arrested and convicted in the Virginia courts for violating a state statute requiring racial segregation on all public vehicles. The NAACP appealed her case to the Supreme Court. On June 3, 1946, by a 6-to-1 decision, the Court ruled that the Virginia statute was unconstitutional when applied to interstate passengers on interstate motor vehicles because it put an undue burden on interstate commerce.

Juanita Jackson Mitchell

The NAACP’s first national youth director