Lyda Conley

Lyda Conley was a female Native American lawyer. She was born to Eliza Burton Zane Conley, a member of the Wyandotte Indian Tribe. Her father was Andrew Conley, an Englishman. She graduated from Kansas City School of Law in 1902. In 1906, Congress authorized the Secretary of Interior to convey the Huron Place Cemetery where her ancestors where buried. She and her sisters disagreed with this, and erected a fort at the cemetery where they stood guard with muskets, and put up "No trespassing" signs around the cemetery. In 1907 she filed a petition for injunction against government intervention in the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Kansas. Her case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, and she personally argued before the court. She was the first female Native American lawyer, and the first Native American woman to argue before the Supreme Court of the United States. Although she lost when Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes ruled in favor of the lower courts, Senator Charles Curtis of Kansas introduced a bill that precluded the sale and made the land a national monument. The cemetery was placed on the National Historic Register in 1971.

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* [http://www1.law.umkc.edu/career/UMKC%20Inns/conley.htm "The Inns of UMKC. Lyda Conley (1874-1946)," URL accessed 05/27/06]