About the Women's Bar Association of Illinois
History: First 75 Years
Former WBAI President, Charlotte Adelman, the WBAI’s archivist and historian for over 26 years, singlehandedly wrote the WBAI 75 – a history book of the WBAI’s First 75 Years thereby reducing the history of the WBAI to writing for future generations to enjoy. The WBAI 75 can not only be viewed on this page of the WBAI’s website but also at local book stores and law libraries. On March 5, 2004, at the WBAI’s 90th Anniversary Reception, attendees gathered for the presentation of the WBAI’s Chief Justice Mary Ann G. McMorrow Award, the very first award that any organization had ever named after Justice McMorrow. The first recipient of this award was Charlotte Adelman for her continued years of service and preservation of the WBAI’s history.
Adelman graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1962 after a law professor told her to quit law school and become a wife and mother, and a classmate publicly accused her of taking a man’s seat and only trying to get a husband. (He joined his family business and never practiced law.) Just one year later, Adelman opened a private practice after being refused employment because of her sex by the State’s Attorney’s Office, Public Defender’s Office, U.S. Attorney, Attorney General’s Office, insurance defense firms and private law firms. Following passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, she remained in private practice. Being admitted to practice before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Charlotte worked to bring equality to women as lawyers and citizens.
Click to download the WBAI 75 as a PDF
Throughout the 1960-1970’s, Adelman handled indigent prisoners’ jury murder trials and other felony cases as a member of the Chicago Bar Association’s Defense of Prisoners’ Committee, and handled cases before the Illinois Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), winning the first case filed by a woman (dogcatcher) and the first case of discrimination on the basis of motherhood of small children (school teacher). Throughout the 1970’s, Adelman testified for an Equal Rights provision in the Illinois Constitution before the Bill of Rights Committee at the Illinois Constitutional Convention and before the Illinois Fair Employment Practice Commission (FEPC) regarding guidelines for sex discrimination. She also testified before the Chicago City Council and Judiciary Committee on behalf of ordinances which were passed outlawing sex discrimination in public accommodations and adding sex as a category of discrimination in cases heard before the Chicago Commission of Human Rights.
From 1971-1972, as a cooperating ACLU/NOW attorney, Adelman filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District demanding five Chicago newspapers integrate their sex-segregated help-wanted ads on the basis they were acting as employment agencies within the meaning of Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was decided on brief adverse to plaintiff, but a Notice of Appeal resulted in the newspapers “voluntarily” integrating their help-wanted advertisements in March of 1972.
From 1973-1986, she helped found a drop-in legal clinic for free on-the-spot legal consultations at the Loop Center YWCA. She also organized and chaired an all day public hearing sponsored by the Illinois Commission on the Status of Women and the Loop YWCA examining problems women experience collecting child support in 1975. At the same time, she created a child support collection committee to deal with these problems.
Adelman acted as the Chair of the WBAI Rights of Women Committee from 1976-1977. Moreover, at that time, she obtained Illinois State Bar Association (ISBA) revisions to “Know your Lawyer” and “Newly Marrieds” pamphlets so as to depict lawyers as female as well as male. She spent the following two years drafting, testifying in favor of and lobbying for an Illinois child support collection law. It passed the Illinois legislature and Governor James Thompson signed it into law on September 12, 1980.
From 1978-1979, Adelman acted as the founding President of the Chicago Chapter of National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) and from 1984-1985, the President of the WBAI. As President, Adelman collected and arranged for WBAI to donate its papers and records to the Chicago Historical Society, created the WBAI Past Presidents’ Council, and made 1990 WBAI Anniversary calendars.
In 1985, Adelman was elected the first Woman President of the North Suburban Bar Association (NSBA). From 1985-1986, she co-chaired the WBAI Committee to Oppose the Proposed Uniform Marital Property Act (UMPA), which reduced a woman’s share of marital property to 50%. And in 1986, she initiated and co-edited a special issue of the ISBA’s Journal - Women in The Law.
Most notably, in 1990, Adelman negotiated a divorce settlement gaining her client half of her ex-husband’s $1 million Nobel Prize.
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