GILLETT, EMMA MELINDA
Emma Melinda Gillett was a remarkable attorney who helped establish one of the first coeducational law schools in the United States. In 1896, Gillett and a colleague, ELLEN SPENCER MUSSEY, sponsored a series of lectures in Washington, D.C., for local women interested in law.
Despite social pressures against women in the legal profession, Gillett and Mussey held the lectures for two years. They expanded their curriculum and created Washington College of Law, a co-educational institution that later became part of American University.
Gillett was born July 30, 1852, in Princeton, Wisconsin. After her father, Richard J. Gillett,
died in 1854, Gillett moved to Girard, Pennsylvania, with her mother, Sarah Ann Gillett, and family. Like Mussey, Gillett attended Lake Erie Seminary in Painesville, Ohio. Upon graduation in 1870, Gillett became a public school teacher.
After ten years of teaching, she decided to move to Washington, D.C., to pursue a LEGAL
EDUCATION and career.Her plans were thwarted by the refusal of most district law schools to admit women. Gillett overcame the obstacle by enrolling at Howard University Law College, a well-known, predominantly African American institution that did accept female students.
Gillett earned a law degree from Howard in 1882 and a master of law degree in 1883. She began a successful law practice in Washington, D.C., and became vice president of the D.C. region of the previously all-male AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION. She also was elected president of the
Women’s Bar Association of the District of
Columbia.
Both Gillett and Mussey had been denied
admission to the all-male, all-white law schools
in Washington, D.C., which likely motivated the
women to form the Washington College of Law.
Three additional motivating factors have also
been identified. First, women’s voluntary associ-
ations had experienced significant growth dur-
ing the latter part of the nineteenth century.
Second, opportunities for women in higher edu-
cation had expanded. Third, the women’s suf-
frage movement had grown considerably.
Gillett and Mussey established a co-
educational institution, rather than a women-
only law school. They believed that admitting
both men and women as students, as well as hir-
ing male faculty and administrators, were neces-
sary to promote gender equality. Perhaps as
important, Gillett and Mussey knew that admit-
ting men as students and employing men in fac-
ulty and administrative positions were necessary
to promote the long-term success of the school.
Fifteen years after its establishment, in fact, the
number of men enrolled in the school outnum-
bered the number of women, due largely to the
fact that two other law schools in Washington,
D.C., began to admit women as students. Never-
theless, only women served as deans of the
Washington College of Law until 1947. Wash-
ington College of Law earned accreditation from
the American Bar Association in 1940 and
became a part of American University in 1949.
Gillett succeeded Mussey as dean of the law
school in 1913, heading the institution for ten
years. Gillett died on January 23, 1927, in Wash-
