This is an iHeart Podcast. This message comes from the International Rescue Committee. The IRC has been providing humanitarian aid for more than 90 years. The International Rescue Committee helps refugees whose lives are disrupted by conflict and disaster, supporting recovery efforts in places like Gaza and Ukraine, and responding within 72 hours of crisis. Donate today by visiting rescue.org/slash rebuild.
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It's a long-term commitment. Visit WorkingForestsInitiative.com to learn more. And we return to Our American Stories. Up next, a story from Janine Turner. Jeanine is best known for her role as Maggie O'Connell.
on the hit television sitcom. Northern exposure. But she's also a proud single mother. and a lifelong student of history. Today, Janine shares with us how she found inspiration from Belva Lockwood.
19th century crusader for women's rights. And the first woman to practice law. in front of the Supreme Court. Let's get into the story. I'm a single mom.
I raised my daughter, Juliet, by myself. The father wasn't around. He didn't choose to be around.
So I raised her completely by myself, no weekends or anything of that nature. And I I decided to write a book about single mothers. And when I was writing this book, I was in a $100-a-month rented space near my daughter's school. Literally, their storage room with no windows or anything. It was dark.
And it was before the internet, really.
So I researched every book in the library and found these women, and they're all exceptional, but Bellva Lockwood. Spoke to my heart. What's amazing is her story is incredibly modern, but she did it before anybody else. She was one of these.
Sort of renegade, indomitable spirits that just was not going to give up before the miracle. That's what I had to learn in my own life in the industry. I moved to New York City at 15 to model, I moved to Hollywood at 17. It was a 12-year process to finally have my big break. Northern exposure, my big claim to fame was in 1990.
But all of my life, I've been told you can't accomplish this, you can't possibly do this, you can't possibly make it. There are a million women who want to be actresses. What makes you think you're going to be one with your long hair and hot pink nail polish from Texas? I had to learn to have belief in myself and to say, I'm not going to give up for the miracle and thank God it finally happened when I had $8 left. But that kernel of survival and mission and purpose, Belva had that.
Belva Lockwood was born in upstate New York in 1830. Think about that. Our government, as we know it now, didn't even start till 1789, which is really like 1790.
So she's 40 years away from the beginning of our country. And at a young age, she said to her father, I want to have more education. The opportunity required money. Her father was a farmer. No, you can't.
And Belva said, well, I'll make my own money. I'll teach school. I'll do whatever I need to do to find the funding to further my education because she was just one of these insatiably curious women. And I think curiosity is the. Basis of genius.
She was a genius. From a child, the bent of my mind has been one of extreme practicality. That knowledge only has been prized which I could immediately turn to account in everyday life. And in the pursuit of such knowledge, I have been undaunted by conventions. Balva was extraordinarily young when she stepped into the classroom, but she had that gravitas, she had the confidence, and she had the genuine intellect.
To be able to teach these young children. And not only did she get more years on her primary education, she decided that then she wanted to go to college. And her father was like, Are you kidding? Because women were not allowed to really work. They're expected to do household chores and go out and kill the chickens and cook the meal and to marry.
Her father was obsessed that she get married, and he said, You're going to be so smart, no woman's ever going to want to marry you. And she said, Well, why not? I have never been able to enter into the prejudices of centuries past that have had no foundation reason in nature or in nature's laws. My only thought was to do those things which, in the nature of human affairs, seemed to be the things to be done. and to do them in the best and most expeditious manner.
Hence I was not careful as to the nature of my work so that it was a means to an end, and never stopped for a moment to consider whether the labor was such as women were accustomed to do, but only whether I had the ability to perform it. But she did finally get married. She had her first child around the age of 20, and her husband died in a terrible. Accident in the sawmill where he was working. And so she was a widow.
Think about that. Married at around 19, had her first child.
Now she's a widow. She's only around 21. In those days, if a woman was a single mother, she had more power over her children. If she married, the husband had all the rights to the children. And if he wanted to sell your child into servitude, he could.
He had all the say in every regard. And so She made the decision that she wanted to continue her education and raise her child herself. And her father was just mystified and mortified and said, Are you kidding? No, people get remarried. What are you doing?
And she says, Well, I don't want to do that. I don't want to lose the rights to my child. And I have a vision. And so she set forth, got a higher education with her child by her side. And then after that, she started her own school.
And remember, she's a single mom. No one did this. In my effort to discover new avenues of labor, I met with some ludicrous and some serious experiences, many of which were known only to myself. There was a vacancy in the councilship of Ghent. I had the audacity to make an application for it.
I reviewed my German, read all the authors I could find on international law in the United States Supreme Court Library, and procuring through my member of Congress a copy of the consular manual, so that I fully believed that I was competent to perform the service required of this particular officer. never once stopping to consider whether the nation to which I should be accredited would receive a woman. To my disappointment and chagrin, no notice was ever taken of my application. At every juncture, she took a risk. And I think it's that ability to go out on a limb and take a risk where people really find their calling and their purpose.
It's very difficult to make this type of choice, especially when she was raising a child all by herself. But she took that risk, and then she decided that she wanted to. go to law school and nobody went to law school very few women ever desired to go to law school In my college course, I had studied and had become deeply interested in the Constitution of the United States. I had early conceived a passion for reading the biographies of great men and had discovered that. In almost every instance, law had been the stepping stone to greatness.
Born a woman. I had all the ambitions of a man. forgetting the gulf between the rights and privileges of the sexes. And she applied to many law schools and had rejection slip after rejection slip after rejection slip. Rejection is a hard thing to endure.
Rejection can be crushing. Right before Northern Exposure was picked up, I had $8 left to my name, and I didn't think. I could handle any more. rejection. I was on my knees because I thought I was going to get this Tom Selleck pilot with Stanley Chuci, and I didn't get it.
And I just was on my knees, and I heard. on my heart, God imbue upon my spirit. Don't let anybody put out your flame. Don't let anybody put out your flame. And the flame is your light and your purpose that I've given you.
And you just have to persevere. Show up. I was destitute, I was depressed, but I rolled out of bed and showed up for what I thought was going to be one more rejection. And that was for this role as Maggie O'Connell. And so showing up and saying, God has given me a purpose, and I'm going to listen to my inner voice.
and I'm not going to let anybody put out my flame. That's what Belva did. I showed up for that Northern Exposure audition, but that's what Velva did. She says, I'm gonna show up. I'm not gonna take no for an answer.
And one of the law schools admitted her. I think there were a few women at the beginning, but most of them fell away. And there were only about two or three women at the end that actually graduated. She did. And you've been listening to actress Janine Turner.
recounting the story of Belva Lockwood, And while watching Janine draw the parallels between Velva's life and her own as a single mom, And that indeed is what Belleva Lockwood was, and she decided to keep the child. And get an education, and moreover, go to law school facing rejection after rejection, she pushed on. And had every right to do so. When we come back, what happens next in the life of Bellva Lockwood? Here on Our American Story.
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When we last left off, Janine was telling us how Belva had decided to not only attend college at a time when most women didn't. but then decided to attend law school. Let's continue with the story here again. is Janine Turner. She Walked through law school, but when she graduated, they wouldn't let her graduate with the men.
She had to graduate on a separate platform. Not only that, they didn't give her a diploma. The men felt that their degrees would not be worthy if a woman could also get the same degree. She was told, I'm sorry, no, you don't actually get a diploma. And she said, Wait, I can't practice law in the higher courts, most especially if you don't give me proof of my diploma.
And they said, Oh, well, sorry, bye, you're not getting one. Ulysses S. Grant was the president of this particular college.
So Bellva Lockwood wrote him a letter. To His Excellency U.S. Grant. Sir. You are or are you not President of the National University Law School?
If you are its President, I desire to say to you that I have passed through the curriculum of study in this school and am entitled to and demand my diploma. If you are not its president, then I ask you to take your name from its papers and not hold out to the world what you are not. Excuse me in paraphrasing. You say you're the president of this school. If you are, then I demand.
She didn't ask nicely. She said, I demand my diploma. She received her diploma. She was not going to take no for an answer, and she just was really driven. She was a woman, sort of a Renaissance woman.
She was a little bit ahead of her time. I am a woman of faith, and I believe that God whispers in our ears with our purpose in life. And her purpose in life was to strike forth. Belva started her own law firm, and she had a case that she wanted to argue in front of the Supreme Court.
So she marched over. I guess in those days, you know, it was very different. And, you know, in the beginning, the Supreme Court was in the sort of the basement of the Senate office. They didn't even have a building. And she applied to be a member of the bar of the United States Supreme Court.
She passed all the requisite tests. She had letters of recommendation. She had everything that was necessary to be admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court. And they denied her. For the first time in my life, I began to realize it was a crime.
to be a woman. and I at once pleaded guilty to the charge of the court. Then the Chief Justice announced: this case will be continued for one week. I retired in good order. that my counsel who had only been employed for that occasion, deserted me, and and seemed never afterwards to have a backbone enough to keep up the fight.
Yeah. On the following week, duly, as the hand of the clock approached the hour of twelve, I again marched into the courtroom. but this time as solemn as the judges, and accompanied by my husband and several friends. When the case of Lockhood was reached, the solemn tones of the Chief Justice announced Miss Lockwood. You are a married woman.
True to Bellville Lockwood's nature, she fought this and she would just go back and she would meet with them and say, Why? Why am I not allowed to be in the bar of the United States Supreme Court? You can see why this makes such a great theatrical musical. I collected myself and responded with a wave of a hand towards my husband. Yes, may it please the court, but I'm here with the consent of my husband, Dr.
Lockwood. at the same time bowing to the court. My pleading and distressed look was of no avail. The solemn Chief Justice responded. This case will be continued for another week.
The position which this court assumes is under the laws and constitution of the United States is without power to grant an application that a woman is without legal capacity to take the office of attorney. And finally, the judges said, well, you know, well, there's no precedent. There's never been a woman on the bar. She says, wait, that's a bit of a conundrum because if you're saying I can't become a member of the bar because a woman has never been admitted to the bar, but you never admit a woman to the bar, then how's a woman ever going to be admitted to the bar? The ordinary female mind would have ended the matter.
But I was at this time not only thoroughly invested in the law, But devoted to my clients and determined to support my family by the profession I had chosen.
So she said, fine. We have three branches in our government and we have a United States Constitution.
So if you will not allow me to be admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court because there's no precedent, then I will take this to the legislative branch who will then pass a bill and then they will take it to the executive branch. She did just that on the 3rd of March. Mm-hmm. on motion of the Honorable AG Riddle. I was admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court.
The passage of that bill Virtually opened the doors of all the federal courts in the country to the women of the land whenever qualified for such admission. Thus ended the great struggle for the admission of women to the bar. Belva A. Lockwood. You know, I think it's important to kind of sidebar here for a minute that this wasn't Kind of a situation where there were no men who believed in women and there were no men who sided with women.
There were. She had champions and she had a champion in the Senate. But then he got sick. And so it took her five years to get this through the legislative branch. But she finally did.
And she marched right back and said, hello.
So she was the first. She was the first woman to be admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court. And during this time, the Equal Rights Party came along and said, we would like for you to run for president. She took weight. You want me to run for president?
And they said yes.
So she was on the ballot. People don't know this. They think that this has only happened in recent decades, but she was on the ballot as a woman. Women couldn't even vote.
So she was the first woman to actually run for president in 1884, and then she ran again in 1888.
Now when you're up against such incredible odds, as she was. But even I was. My daughter and I would even go listen to lectures, and they would talk about single mothers with a like ruin of America. It's more accepted today, but it wasn't even that accepted on the cusp of 1997. But it definitively wasn't something that a woman did in 1850.
And that is a. That is a daunting Experience. And my faith was incredibly important to me. And Belva had that same sort of faith. It's that kernel of strength and power.
I mean, with God at her side, walking beside her, with this sort of embedded sense of higher purpose, by golly, she was going to accomplish these things. She lost two children, two husbands, and she still persevered to the end of her life. She was still taking court cases to the United States Supreme Court. She was still fighting, you know, in her late 70s. There's just this choice we have to make.
And I have felt it in my own life. There has to be a choice. Where I I'm gonna say. Am I gonna go over the cliff? let woe engulf me?
Or am I gonna roll out of bed? And show up. and live the purpose. that God has given me with God's purpose. God's power.
and God's protection. That's what Belvalock would do. Uh And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by Aron Monty Montgomery. And a special thanks to Janine Turner for sharing this remarkable story. She's the founder of Constituting America.
To find out more about the wonderful work they do with students across the country, go to constitutingamerica.org. Janine has also written a play about the life of Belva. It's called Just Call Me Belva. Be sure to check it out. The story of Belva Lockwood on Our American Stories.
This message comes from the International Rescue Committee. The IRC has been providing humanitarian aid for more than 90 years. The International Rescue Committee helps refugees whose lives are disrupted by conflict and disaster, supporting recovery efforts in places like Gaza and Ukraine, and responding within 72 hours of crisis. Donate today by visiting rescue.org/slash rebuild. That's rescue.org/slash rebuild to learn more and donate today.
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This is that classic HBCU vibe. Non-stop action, the band is rocking and the crowd lick, chants echo, drum beat, everybody showing that school pride. game like this? Yeah, it calls for an ice cold Coca-Cola. Ah, crisp and refreshing.
That's a game changer right there. Mmm, yeah. That taste always hits the right note, just like a band at halftime. And just like that, we're back at it. Passionate fans, school colors everywhere, and an ice cold Coca-Cola, that's a winning combo.
No matter the sport, no matter the yard, everybody knows. Fan work is thirsty work, so grab a Coca-Cola and keep that HBCU pride going. Happy. We finally switched to T-Mobile because with them, we can be connected here and there. Dad, the cousins in Mexico have a surprise for you.
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