Ruth Whitehead Whaley

Ruth Whitehead Whaley (February 2, 1901 – December 23, 1977) was the third African American woman admitted to practice law in New York in 1925 She was the first Black woman to graduate from Fordham University School of Law, where she graduated cum laude in 1924. Both of her parents, Charles A. Whitehead and Dora (née Cox) Whitehead, were school teachers. She was a congregant of the AME Zion Church.

Ruth C. Whitehead married Herman S. Whaley in 1920 in Goldsboro. Her husband encouraged her to study law despite the difficulties of racism. The couple had two children, Herman W. Whaley and Ruth M. (Whaley) Spearman. a historically Black college (HBCU) founded in 1879. She graduated in June 1919 after earning an A.B. degree. After college, she worked as a teacher at the North Carolina State School for the Deaf in Raleigh.

Career In 1925, Whaley passed the New York bar exam, becoming the third black woman to practice law in New York. She also became the first black woman to pass the bar exam in North Carolina, when she returned to Goldsboro in 1933. Jim Crow laws made it very hard for black lawyers to practice in North Carolina, even up to the mid-1900s, but with the assistance of family friend and attorney Hugh Dortch, she was able to get a license by reciprocity. The license was mostly ceremonial, as the state did not want her to actually practice law in North Carolina. She never did practice there, returning to New York after the ceremony (making Elreta Alexander-Ralston the first black woman to practice law in North Carolina over ten years later, in 1947). This made her one of the first black women across the whole U.S. to be nominated by a major political party. In 1949, Whaley penned an essay entitled "Women Lawyers Must Balk Both Color and Sex Bias," in which she described the "penalty" of women, and especially minority women, lawyers who must outperform their male colleagues lest "the overlooked errors of a male colleague become the colossal blunders of the woman." Since the legal profession had been for centuries a "male precinct," and biases against women were still strong in the 1940s, women were frequently blamed for men's mistakes and pushed out of the field. Her essay noted the lack of opportunities for female attorneys, the pressure to perform extra community service, the requirement of near-perfect performance, and how clients would rationalize that performance as the work of one black woman who broke the norm, rather than allowing it to breach their stereotypes.Rebels in Law: Voices in History of Black Women Lawyers

Whaley held appointed positions in New York City including Director of Staff and Community Relations in the Department of Welfare and Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Housing and Buildings. From 1951 until 1973 she served as the Secretary of the New York City Board of Estimate. She served as the Vice President of the National Council of Negro Women and was the founder and former President of the Negro Business and Professional Women's Club. She died on December 23, 1977, and is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Yonkers. She was inducted into the alumni Hall of Honor at Fordham University on October 22, 2014.