Born in Chicago in 1863, Ida Platt became the first African-American woman to earn an Illinois law license, and the first African-American woman to graduate from Chicago College of Law in 1894. Platt worked her way through law school, employed as a law reporter and stenographer in the law office of Jesse Cox, a white Chicago attorney who specialized in patent law. Upon her admission to the bar in June of 1894, Platt began working in the office of Joseph Washington Errant, a white Chicago attorney and former high school classmate. In Errant's downtown office, she specialized in probate and real estate law, and developed a large clientele of foreigners due to her fluency in German and French. Platt later opened her own law office on Van Buren Street, where she practiced from 1906-1910. During this time, she moved her family from the area known as Chicago's Black Belt to the prestigious, and mostly white, Hyde Park neighborhood. She continued to practice law, both from her own office in the North American Building on State Street, which she opened in 1911, and from her home in Hyde Park, until 1928. At the age of 65, Platt married and relocated to England, where she passed away in 1939. Ida Platt remained the only African American woman lawyer in the state of Illinois until 1920.
In 1894, Ida Platt became the first African-American woman lawyer in Illinois. She was one of only five black women lawyers in the country and the only one able to maintain a law practice. Throughout her thirty-three year career, Platt served as head of her household, providing for her mother and sisters, without marrying or having children. She accomplished these feats by employing a fluid racial identity, passing as white in her professional life, and by avoiding the dominant gender roles that excluded women from the masculine legal profession. In 1927, at the age of sixty-four, Ida Platt retired, married Walter Burke, a white man, and moved to England. Twelve years later, Ida Burke died. As is the practice in England, there was no race designation on her death certificate.
Platt's choice to employ a fluid racial identity allowed her to pursue her career as a lawyer amidst a racist and sexist society that particularly discriminated against black women. She entered the law when Jim Crow was taking root, race lines were hardening, and elite, white, male lawyers were intensifying their opposition to women's rise within the profession. Platt's life and career offer insights into how law and the legal profession responded to the complexities of race and tender a new story of the lived experience of race as it intersects with gender. It suggests that Platt's pragmatic strategy of changing her racial identity both contested and shaped the ways in which race, gender, and identity were constructed and represented in American society, as it exposed both the rigidity and permeability of these constructions.
Cousin of Richard T. Greener #20477831
At same stone ?
Any information about her siblings is welcome.
First African - American woman licensed to practice law in Illinois.∼Ida Platt was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Jacob F. and Amelia B. Platt. Her father owned a lumber business. She worked as a stenographer and secretary to pay her way at law school, and learned German and French in her work. She also studied piano as a young woman.
Platt was the first African-American woman to graduate from Chicago-Kent College of Law when she finished in 1894.
Ida Platt was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1894, becoming the first African-American woman lawyer in that state, and the third in the United States. She worked in the Chicago office of Joseph Washington Errant, practicing probate and real estate law. In 1896 she spoke at the national convention of the Colored Women's League in New York City, on "Woman in the Profession of Law". She opened her own law office downtown in 1911. She was a member of the Cook County Bar Association.
Platt married in 1923, at age 61, and moved to England. She died there in 1939, aged 76 years. Today there is public housing for seniors in Chicago named the Ida Platt Apartments in her memory.
4/23 update:
Ida is buried with her husband, Walter Keith Burke, who died 4 Apr 1940: Source West Sussex, England Church of England Deaths and Burials 1813-1995.
Contributor: 50345882. Thank you
In 1894, Ida Platt became the first African-American woman lawyer in Illinois. She was one of only five black women lawyers in the country and the only one able to maintain a law practice. Throughout her thirty-three year career, Platt served as head of her household, providing for her mother and sisters, without marrying or having children. She accomplished these feats by employing a fluid racial identity, passing as white in her professional life, and by avoiding the dominant gender roles that excluded women from the masculine legal profession. In 1927, at the age of sixty-four, Ida Platt retired, married Walter Burke, a white man, and moved to England. Twelve years later, Ida Burke died. As is the practice in England, there was no race designation on her death certificate.
Platt's choice to employ a fluid racial identity allowed her to pursue her career as a lawyer amidst a racist and sexist society that particularly discriminated against black women. She entered the law when Jim Crow was taking root, race lines were hardening, and elite, white, male lawyers were intensifying their opposition to women's rise within the profession. Platt's life and career offer insights into how law and the legal profession responded to the complexities of race and tender a new story of the lived experience of race as it intersects with gender. It suggests that Platt's pragmatic strategy of changing her racial identity both contested and shaped the ways in which race, gender, and identity were constructed and represented in American society, as it exposed both the rigidity and permeability of these constructions.
Cousin of Richard T. Greener #20477831
At same stone ?
Any information about her siblings is welcome.
First African - American woman licensed to practice law in Illinois.∼Ida Platt was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Jacob F. and Amelia B. Platt. Her father owned a lumber business. She worked as a stenographer and secretary to pay her way at law school, and learned German and French in her work. She also studied piano as a young woman.
Platt was the first African-American woman to graduate from Chicago-Kent College of Law when she finished in 1894.
Ida Platt was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1894, becoming the first African-American woman lawyer in that state, and the third in the United States. She worked in the Chicago office of Joseph Washington Errant, practicing probate and real estate law. In 1896 she spoke at the national convention of the Colored Women's League in New York City, on "Woman in the Profession of Law". She opened her own law office downtown in 1911. She was a member of the Cook County Bar Association.
Platt married in 1923, at age 61, and moved to England. She died there in 1939, aged 76 years. Today there is public housing for seniors in Chicago named the Ida Platt Apartments in her memory.
4/23 update:
Ida is buried with her husband, Walter Keith Burke, who died 4 Apr 1940: Source West Sussex, England Church of England Deaths and Burials 1813-1995.
Contributor: 50345882. Thank you
Born in Chicago in 1863, Ida Platt became the first African-American woman to earn an Illinois law license, and the first African-American woman to graduate from Chicago College of Law in 1894. Platt worked her way through law school, employed as a law reporter and stenographer in the law office of Jesse Cox, a white Chicago attorney who specialized in patent law. Upon her admission to the bar in June of 1894, Platt began working in the office of Joseph Washington Errant, a white Chicago attorney and former high school classmate. In Errant's downtown office, she specialized in probate and real estate law, and developed a large clientele of foreigners due to her fluency in German and French. Platt later opened her own law office on Van Buren Street, where she practiced from 1906-1910. During this time, she moved her family from the area known as Chicago's Black Belt to the prestigious, and mostly white, Hyde Park neighborhood. She continued to practice law, both from her own office in the North American Building on State Street, which she opened in 1911, and from her home in Hyde Park, until 1928. At the age of 65, Platt married and relocated to England, where she passed away in 1939. Ida Platt remained the only African American woman lawyer in the state of Illinois until 1920.
In 1894, Ida Platt became the first African-American woman lawyer in Illinois. She was one of only five black women lawyers in the country and the only one able to maintain a law practice. Throughout her thirty-three year career, Platt served as head of her household, providing for her mother and sisters, without marrying or having children. She accomplished these feats by employing a fluid racial identity, passing as white in her professional life, and by avoiding the dominant gender roles that excluded women from the masculine legal profession. In 1927, at the age of sixty-four, Ida Platt retired, married Walter Burke, a white man, and moved to England. Twelve years later, Ida Burke died. As is the practice in England, there was no race designation on her death certificate.
Platt's choice to employ a fluid racial identity allowed her to pursue her career as a lawyer amidst a racist and sexist society that particularly discriminated against black women. She entered the law when Jim Crow was taking root, race lines were hardening, and elite, white, male lawyers were intensifying their opposition to women's rise within the profession. Platt's life and career offer insights into how law and the legal profession responded to the complexities of race and tender a new story of the lived experience of race as it intersects with gender. It suggests that Platt's pragmatic strategy of changing her racial identity both contested and shaped the ways in which race, gender, and identity were constructed and represented in American society, as it exposed both the rigidity and permeability of these constructions.
Cousin of Richard T. Greener #20477831
At same stone ?
Any information about her siblings is welcome.
First African - American woman licensed to practice law in Illinois.∼Ida Platt was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Jacob F. and Amelia B. Platt. Her father owned a lumber business. She worked as a stenographer and secretary to pay her way at law school, and learned German and French in her work. She also studied piano as a young woman.
Platt was the first African-American woman to graduate from Chicago-Kent College of Law when she finished in 1894.
Ida Platt was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1894, becoming the first African-American woman lawyer in that state, and the third in the United States. She worked in the Chicago office of Joseph Washington Errant, practicing probate and real estate law. In 1896 she spoke at the national convention of the Colored Women's League in New York City, on "Woman in the Profession of Law". She opened her own law office downtown in 1911. She was a member of the Cook County Bar Association.
Platt married in 1923, at age 61, and moved to England. She died there in 1939, aged 76 years. Today there is public housing for seniors in Chicago named the Ida Platt Apartments in her memory.
4/23 update:
Ida is buried with her husband, Walter Keith Burke, who died 4 Apr 1940: Source West Sussex, England Church of England Deaths and Burials 1813-1995.
Contributor: 50345882. Thank you
In 1894, Ida Platt became the first African-American woman lawyer in Illinois. She was one of only five black women lawyers in the country and the only one able to maintain a law practice. Throughout her thirty-three year career, Platt served as head of her household, providing for her mother and sisters, without marrying or having children. She accomplished these feats by employing a fluid racial identity, passing as white in her professional life, and by avoiding the dominant gender roles that excluded women from the masculine legal profession. In 1927, at the age of sixty-four, Ida Platt retired, married Walter Burke, a white man, and moved to England. Twelve years later, Ida Burke died. As is the practice in England, there was no race designation on her death certificate.
Platt's choice to employ a fluid racial identity allowed her to pursue her career as a lawyer amidst a racist and sexist society that particularly discriminated against black women. She entered the law when Jim Crow was taking root, race lines were hardening, and elite, white, male lawyers were intensifying their opposition to women's rise within the profession. Platt's life and career offer insights into how law and the legal profession responded to the complexities of race and tender a new story of the lived experience of race as it intersects with gender. It suggests that Platt's pragmatic strategy of changing her racial identity both contested and shaped the ways in which race, gender, and identity were constructed and represented in American society, as it exposed both the rigidity and permeability of these constructions.
Cousin of Richard T. Greener #20477831
At same stone ?
Any information about her siblings is welcome.
First African - American woman licensed to practice law in Illinois.∼Ida Platt was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Jacob F. and Amelia B. Platt. Her father owned a lumber business. She worked as a stenographer and secretary to pay her way at law school, and learned German and French in her work. She also studied piano as a young woman.
Platt was the first African-American woman to graduate from Chicago-Kent College of Law when she finished in 1894.
Ida Platt was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1894, becoming the first African-American woman lawyer in that state, and the third in the United States. She worked in the Chicago office of Joseph Washington Errant, practicing probate and real estate law. In 1896 she spoke at the national convention of the Colored Women's League in New York City, on "Woman in the Profession of Law". She opened her own law office downtown in 1911. She was a member of the Cook County Bar Association.
Platt married in 1923, at age 61, and moved to England. She died there in 1939, aged 76 years. Today there is public housing for seniors in Chicago named the Ida Platt Apartments in her memory.
4/23 update:
Ida is buried with her husband, Walter Keith Burke, who died 4 Apr 1940: Source West Sussex, England Church of England Deaths and Burials 1813-1995.
Contributor: 50345882. Thank you
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