Answer: Ada Kepley. In 1870, she graduated from the Union College of Law — the law department of the old University of Chicago, later absorbed into Northwestern — becoming the first American woman to hold a law degree. Illinois promptly refused her a license under a state rule barring women from the bar, and an appeal went nowhere, so the remedy had to come from the legislature: her husband, attorney Henry Kepley, helped draft and pass an 1872 Illinois act prohibiting sex discrimination in the professions. Read more here.
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