Who was the First African-American Female to Practice Law in Washington, D.C.?

Okay, it may not be Black History Month when you read this, but is that any reason to not be able to answer this question: Who was the first African-America woman to practice law in this nation's capital, Washington, D.C.? Give up? Of course you do. There just is not enough room to slip this kind of history in between glorifying General George S. Patton and Ronald Reagan is there? Okay, the mystery and suspense ends now. Not only was Charlotte Ray (not to be confused with the woman who watched over Tootie, Jo and Blair on The Facts of Life, Charlotte Rae) the first African-American woman to practice law in Washington, D.C., but she was also the first black woman to earn a law degree.

Although taking this route is always a dangerous path because it tends to undercut the accomplishment itself, the simple truth remains that it would have been more difficult for Charlotte Ray to ever step inside a courtroom (something she actually rarely did for reasons soon to become apparent) had it not been for a white woman named Myrtilla Miner. Ray was the star pupil at Myrtilla Miner's Institution for the Education of Colored Youth in Washington. Miner was dedicated to proving the then-radical proposition that black women were just as capable of doing anything that was traditionally dominated by white men as anyone else. (A proposition well on its way to being proved true until Condi "White" Rice set back the cause for who knows how long through her utter, and painfully individualize, incompetence as Secretary of State.)