The Chicago Bar Association 150th Celebration

State Supreme Court for admission to the bar; however, the Illinois Supreme Court rejected her application because she was married, due to the “disability imposed by marriage.” Although Bradwell filed a brief citing many cases to the contrary, the Supreme Court again rejected her admission, this time not because she was married but because she was a woman. She compared this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott case, 60 US 393 (1856), and called it “annihilation” (Kogan, p. 28). Bradwell filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of error, and in May 1873, the Court affirmed the Illinois Supreme Court, 83 US 130 (1873). They held that practicing law was not a privi lege belonging to citizens of the United States that individual states were prohib ited from abridging. Although Bradwell was enjoined from practicing law, she continued to advocate for other bar applicants, particularly Alta M. Hulett. Having been denied admission to law school, Hulett prepared a bill provid ing that no person could be precluded or debarred from any occupation on account of sex. That bill passed in March 1872, and Hulett was subsequently admitted to the bar. Bradwell too was finally admitted to the bars of the Illinois Supreme Court in 1890 and the U.S. Supreme Court in 1892, but she never practiced. The first President of the CBA was Wil liam C. Goudy, an experienced lawyer from Springfield, IL. Earlier in his career, he campaigned for U.S. Senate as a Dem ocrat and opposed Abraham Lincoln, calling for the President to withdraw his Emancipation Proclamation. Goudy was revealed to have been a member of a secret pro-South organization known as Knights of the Golden Circle; however, after the Civil War, Goudy abandoned politics and concentrated on legal matters. Equally prominent in the early Bar Association were CBA vice-presidents Lyman Trumbull and Thomas Hoyne, both members of the drafting commit tee for the Association’s constitution and William Goudy: First President of The Chicago Bar Association

Grand Pacific Hotel, the scene of early Association dinners and and the early home of the Appellate Court of Illinois. Source: Kogan, Herman, The First Century: The Chicago Bar Association 1874-1974

bylaws. Trumbull was a foe of slavery and a proponent of the 13th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the first legislation pledging equality to Black citizens. Hoyne was a man “thoroughly respected, not only as a lawyer but as a citizen” (Kogan, p. 39). In 1877, the CBA noted two solid accomplishments. Julius Rosenthal, librar ian of the Chicago Law Institute, submitted a bill creating the Probate Court of Cook County. That same year, the CBA sponsored an Act that organized the Appellate Court into four districts: Cook County, Northern Illinois exclusive of Cook County, Central Illinois, and Southern Illinois. During this time, noted jurist Joseph M. Baily began to teach law classes in his chambers after court hours. These classes expanded and soon assumed the name of the Chicago Evening College of Law, the genesis of Chicago Kent College of Law. In 1886, after several years of lag ging membership, the CBA experienced a revival, adding 45 new members to the ranks and resuming the annual din ners that had been cancelled after 1880. This revival was important as Chicago was facing social unrest, a growing pop ulation, and the continuing need for an organized bar to uphold the standards of practice and focus on the equal adminis tration of justice throughout the city.

Haymarket Square Riot The famous Haymarket Square riot occurred on May 4, 1886. Two thousand people had gathered to speak and protest police and others whom the protesters believed were responsible for the clash the previous night at the “strike-bound McCormick harvester works” (Kogan, p. 65). Speakers were addressing the crowd, which included citizens, anar chists, unionists, laborites, and others. As police came to disperse the crowd, and as the speaker was telling the police that the assembled crowd was “peaceable,” a bomb was thrown. The explosion killed several police and injured others. In the ensuing chaos, the police rounded up hundreds of people, some acknowledged anarchists, some suspected, and many innocent citi zens who were taken from their homes without warrants and held without bail. Hundreds were held, and public senti ment was high in condemning anarchists and labor activists. Of those arrested, eight men were held and brought before the grand jury. On May 27, 1886, these men were indicted as accessories to the murder of policeman Mathias J. Degan. The indicted men were condemned in the press, including the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer . It seemed impossible to find counsel for the Haymarket defendants in such an