"Lena Oliva Smith"

Was a prominent civil rights attorney and activist during the 1920s and 1930s.She made major contributions toward securing rights for minorities in the Twin Cities.Lena began fighting for the rights of others when she became the first African American woman licensed to practice law in Minneapolis in 1921.She was the only African American woman to practice law in the state until 1945.She came to Minneapolis at the age of twenty-one in 1907 with her mama and siblings.
Her career before she became a lawyer challenged the racial norm of the Twin Cities.She co-owned a hair salon with a white female partner in downtown Minneapolis but eventually went bankrupt.She then became a realtor,profession known for its blatant racial prejudice.Many realtors and neighborhoods in Minnesota made private agreements restricting the sales of homes to African Americans.
The racism in real estate led her to attend Northwestern College of Law,where she graduated in 1921.Lena became one of nine African Americans attroneys known to practice law in Minneapolis between 1890 & 1927.She was the only African American woman woman to have a law practice in the Twin Cities throughout the 1920s & 1930s.
Protecting African Americans' civil rights was no less urgent a cause for
progressive lawyers in this era than later years.The Twin Cities did not
experience a level of African Americans migration equal to that of other major cities or that racial friction that came with it.Local civil rights issues were the same.African American and white society African American and White Society in the Twin Cities were often segregated.
Discrimnation in hiring and firing practices and in housing was routine.Yet African Americans maintained a thriving local culture replete with newspapers,churches,restaurants,clubs,fraternal halls,and civil rights groups.
In 1925 Lena helped found the Urban League in Minneapolis.In 1930 she was elected the first woman president of the Minneapolis NAACP.Lena left this position nine years later to become a member of the Executive Board and Chair of the joint Legal Redress Committee of the Minneapolis and St.Paul NAACP.As chair of this Committee,Lena was a major force for proactive posture in the courts.
Lena was also known for acting as the NAACP'S prosecuting attorney in the Arthur Lee case in 1931.The Lee family bought a house in a previously all-white neighborhood in south Minneapolis.A white attorney advised the Lees to sell their home to the neighborhood committee and leave the era.The Lee family dropped his counsel and Lena stepped in to defend their rights.The case drew local attention as
crowds estimated in the thousands milled around the Lees' home,Lena successfully protected the Lees' rights to stay in their house.Lena took on other locally important civil rights cases in the period before 1940,including suits against White Castle and the Nicollet Hotel.
These cases focused on equal public accommodations at the Pantages Theatre in Minneapolis.In 1937 she investigated the alleged beating of
Curtis Jordan by two off-duty Minneapolis detectives.Lena won the case for Curtis.She also led the NAACP protest of the University of Minnesota's showing of The Birth of a Nation.
In 1939 Lena was listed in Who's Who Among Women Lawyers.
She was a member of several legal associations and had an extensive law library.Lena was active in her practice until her death in 1966.