Hannah Solomon

“[W]oman’s sphere is the whole wide world.” —Hannah Solomon

Born this day in 1858: Hannah Greenebaum Solomon (1858–1942), social welfare worker, clubwoman, founder of the National Council of Jewish Women

Hannah Solomon was born Hannah Greenebaum to German immigrants in Chicago, Illinois. She was educated at temple school, learning both Hebrew and German, spent two years at a public high school, and studied piano. In 1879 she married a merchant named Henry Solomon. The couple had three children, one of whom died young.

Solomon was active in Chicago’s social and cultural clubs. In 1877 she and her sister Henriette Frank became the first Jewish members of the Chicago Woman’s Club. In 1890 she was part of a committee to organize a World’s Parliament of Religions to be held at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. She organized the Jewish Women’s Congress as an adjunct of the parliament. It was the first general convention held by Jewish women in American. It became the National Council of Jewish Women, and Solomon was its first president. She served in this role until 1905, and then was named honorary president for life. The organization, dedicated to fostering Jewish women’s religious and social responsibilities, quickly formed numerous local chapters.

Solomon also helped found the Illinois Federation of Women’s clubs and the Council of Women of the United States. She was elected treasurer of the council in 1904, and together with Susan B. Anthony and May Wright Sewall, represented it at the International Council of Women’s 1904 meeting in Berlin. She also helped found the Women’s City Club of Chicago in 1910.

Solomon was heavily involved in social welfare work in Chicago. She worked closely with Jane Addams of Hull house on child welfare issues. In the early 1900s she took a leading role in the rehabilitation of the Illinois Industrial School for Girls, which was a training school for delinquent girls. She also played a leading role in the development of the Cook County juvenile court.

Her other social welfare efforts included working with Jewish immigrants, and established the Bureau of Personal Service to provide them legal advice. She also conducted an investigation into Chicago’s waste disposal system.

Hannah Solomon was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1995.

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Charlotte Ray

Born this day in 1850: Charlotte Ray (1850–1911), teacher, first African American woman to hold a law degree, and first woman of any color to be admitted to the bar in Washington, D.C.

Charlotte Ray was a native of New York City and daughter of a pastor who was a prominent member of the African American community and a conductor on the underground railroad. She attended the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth, in Washington, D.C., and in 1869 became a teacher at Howard University in the schools the normal and preparatory department. She also studied law while at Howard, receiving her law degree in 1872. She was the first African American woman in the United States to receive a law degree. She was admitted to the D.C. bar—the law had just been changed, deleting being male as a requirement—becoming the first woman admitted to the bar in the District of Columbia.

Ray set up a law practice, specializing in commercial law, but could not get enough clients to keep her practice open. Accounts describe her as a more than able lawyer, but that racial prejudice kept clients away. By 1879 she resumed her teaching career in her home state of New York, teaching in the Brooklyn public schools.

Not very much is known about the rest of her life. She was active in the women’s movement—records show that she was a delegate to the National Woman Suffrage Association’s annual meeting in New York City in 1876. She married in the late 1880s. In 1895 she joined the newly founded National Association of Colored Women.  Ray died of acute bronchitis in 1911.

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