How Belva Lockwood Broke the Barrier to the Supreme Court Bar

Our American Stories

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.3 • 737 Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this episode of Our American Stories, before most American women could vote, Belva Lockwood stepped into a legal world that never intended to make room for her. Born on a small farm in 1830, she pushed her way into the courtroom and became the first woman in the United States permitted to argue before the Supreme Court. Her work reshaped American law and challenged long-standing assumptions about who could stand before the bench.

Along the way, she pressed for equal pay, fought for access to education, and even mounted two presidential campaigns—all while raising her daughter alone after tragedy struck her family. Janine Turner, creator of the musical Just Call Me Belva! and founder of Constituting America, shares the story of a woman who refused to accept the limits her country placed on her.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an I-Heart podcast.
0:02.6	Guaranteed Human.
0:14.0	And we return to Our American Stories.
0:17.4	Up next, a story from Janine Turner.
0:20.1	Janine is best known for her role as Maggie O'Connell on the hit television sitcom Northern Exposure,
0:27.1	but she's also a proud single mother and a lifelong student of history.
0:32.1	Today, Janine shares with us how she found inspiration from Belleville Lockwood,
0:37.4	19th century crusader for women's
0:39.4	rights, and the first woman to practice law in front of the Supreme Court. Let's get into the
0:46.3	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.
0:55.7	So I raised her completely by myself, no weekends or anything of that nature. And I decided to write a book about single mothers.
1:06.3	And when I was writing this book, I was in a $100 a month rented space near my daughter's school.
1:13.6	Literally, their storage room with no windows or anything.
1:16.2	It was dark.
1:17.1	And it was before the Internet, really.
1:18.8	So I researched every book in the library and found these women.
1:22.6	And they're all exceptional.
1:23.9	But Belleville Lockwood spoke to my heart.
1:30.8	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
1:40.9	spirits that just was not going to give up before the miracle. That's what I had to learn
1:46.6	in my own life in the industry. I moved to New York City at 15 to model. I moved to Hollywood at 17.
1:53.8	It was a 12-year process to finally have my big break. Northern exposure, my big claim to fame was in
	...

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