Black Female Lawyer Dallas

Black Female Lawyers Dallas

When you hire a Black female attorney in Dallas, you may not know the history behind what it took for Black women to become lawyers. In Dallas, Texas, there’s a Black female lawyer named Chloe W. Corbett. She carries on one of the most powerful traditions in American legal history. She is known as the Duchess of Justice. Below are the shoulders she stands on.

The Black Female Pioneers

The story of Black women in American law is not a footnote. It is the foundation. For over 150 years, Black female lawyers have walked into rooms designed to exclude them and changed the rooms and the law forever. This is their story. And it is still being written.

Long before the legal profession acknowledged their right to be there, Black women were studying the law, mastering it, and using it as a weapon against the very injustices it was designed to protect. They did not wait for the profession to welcome them. They forced the door open, one case, one brief, one argument at a time, and then held it open for everyone who came after.

What it cost them to get in the door.

The legal profession in America was not built with Black women in mind. It was built to exclude them. Charlotte Ray had to hide her gender to enroll in law school. Jane Bolin was told by Yale that her race made her unwelcome there. Barbara Jordan could not even attend the University of Texas because of segregation and had to travel out of state for her law degree. Lutie Lytle practiced in states where she was the only Black female lawyer who had ever existed. These women did not have mentors who looked like them. They did not have roadmaps. They had only the law itself, and the unshakeable belief that it could be made to work for everyone.

The women who built the foundation.

Charlotte E. Ray | 1872 The first Black female lawyer in the United States. Because she knew a woman’s application would likely be rejected, she enrolled at Howard University School of Law under the name “C.E. Ray” and graduated at the top of her class. She was admitted to the D.C. Bar and became the first woman ever admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. The profession tried to erase her before she began. She showed up anyway.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary | 1883 An abolitionist, journalist, and the first Black woman to become a newspaper editor in North America, Shadd Cary earned her law degree from Howard University at the age of 60. She had already spoken before the House Judiciary Committee in 1874 to argue for women’s right to vote. The law was simply the next arena. She never stopped finding new ways to fight.

Lutie Lytle | 1897 The third Black woman to earn a law degree in the United States, the first Black woman admitted to practice law in both Kansas and Tennessee, and one of the first female law instructors in the world. As the daughter of formerly enslaved people, she understood the law’s power intimately. “The anchor of my race,” she said, “is grounded on the Constitution.”

The women who broke into the courtroom.

Jane Bolin | 1931 The first Black woman to graduate from Yale Law School, strongly discouraged from applying due to her race, she applied and graduated anyway. In 1939 she became the first Black female judge in the United States, and for the next 20 years she was the only one. For two decades, she was a category of one.

Constance Baker Motley | 1946 The first female attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, she won nine of the ten Supreme Court cases she argued. She became the first Black female state senator in New York, the first Black female borough president of Manhattan, and in 1966, the first African American woman appointed to the federal judiciary. Nine Supreme Court wins. Every single one mattered.

The women who took the fight to Washington.

Barbara Jordan | 1959 — Texas’s own Born in Houston, Jordan attended Boston University School of Law and became one of only three Black women to pass the Texas bar upon graduation. In 1967 she became the first Black woman elected to the Texas State Senate. In 1972 she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1974 she delivered one of the most celebrated speeches in American political history during the Nixon impeachment hearings, reminding a nation that the Constitution belonged to everyone. She was Texas before Texas was ready for her.

Mahala Ashley Dickerson | 1983 The first Black woman to practice law in Alabama, the first admitted to the Alaska bar, and in 1983 the first Black president of the National Association of Women Lawyers. She practiced law until the age of 91. The law was not a career for her. It was a calling.

The women who took over the institutions.

Paulette Brown | 2015 The first Black woman to serve as president of the American Bar Association, the largest voluntary bar association in the world. More than a century after Charlotte Ray was forced to close her practice because the profession would not accept her, a Black woman led the entire profession.

The women who reached the highest court in the land.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson | 2022 The first Black woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and cum laude from Harvard Law School. Her confirmation, 150 years after Charlotte Ray had to disguise her name just to be admitted to law school, was not just a milestone. It was a verdict. And today, from the nation’s highest court, Justice Jackson continues to fight for fairness, equal protection, and the rights of ordinary people everywhere.

What this lineage means and why it matters today.

Every name on this list opened a door. Every door opened made the next woman’s path a little less impossible. That is how a tradition is built, not in monuments, but in the accumulation of courage, case by case, year by year, generation by generation. Charlotte Ray disguised her name to get into law school. Jane Bolin walked into Yale when they did not want her there. Barbara Jordan passed the Texas bar as one of only three Black women in the entire state. Each of them absorbed the resistance, refused to be stopped by it, and left the profession better than they found it.

This is not ancient history. It is recent history. Paulette Brown became the first Black female president of the American Bar Association just ten years ago. Justice Jackson took her seat on the Supreme Court just three years ago. The doors these women opened are still swinging. The work they started is still unfinished. And the women continuing that work are practicing law right now, in courtrooms across this country, including in Dallas, Texas.

The tradition continues in Dallas.

That unbroken chain of Black female excellence runs all the way to Dallas, Texas, and to Judge Carolyn Wright.

Judge Wright earned her law degree from Howard University, which later honored her with a Distinguished Alumni award. She made history in Dallas by becoming the first African American woman to win a countywide election, taking the bench as judge of the 256th District Court of Texas. Governor George Bush appointed her to the Fifth District Court of Appeals as an associate justice in 1995, and on January 4, 2010, she was sworn in as Chief Justice of that court, becoming the first African American in Texas history to lead an intermediate appellate court.

The Next Generation

This brings us to Attorney Chloe W. Corbett, who proudly stands on the shoulders of these trailblazers. Also known as the Duchess of Justice, Attorney Chloe is a Black female lawyer with nearly a decade of experience fighting for people who need someone unafraid to stand up for them. She is the attorney other attorneys do not want on the other side of the table. The one who will not be rushed, will not be pressured, and will not let a client walk away with less than they deserve. When someone in Dallas needs justice and a true fighter in their corner, Chloe is who they call.

A leader in the courtroom and in the profession.

But Chloe’s work goes far beyond the courtroom. As the current Chair of the African American Lawyers Section of the State Bar of Texas, she holds one of the most prominent leadership positions available to a Black attorney in the state. She uses that seat to expand access, elevate voices, and mentor the next generation of Black female lawyers who are watching, the same way a young Black girl in Texas once watched Barbara Jordan and understood for the first time that the Senate chamber could belong to her too.

She knows the names on this page.

Chloe carries the full weight of this lineage into everything she does. She knows what these women sacrificed and what they built. And she shows up every single day as living proof that their work was not in vain, that a Black woman attorney in Dallas can walk into any courtroom in Texas with her head high, her arguments sharp, and the unbroken chain of 150 years of Black female excellence at her back.

While Justice Jackson fights for justice on the nation’s highest court, Chloe W. Corbett fights for it in the courtrooms of Dallas, for real people, in real cases, with the full weight of this extraordinary tradition behind her.

The lineage lives. The work continues. The Duchess has entered the room.

Call The Duchess of Justice NOW!

(469) 726-2626