ASALH Edna McKenzie Branch member Martha Richards Conley, the first Black woman to graduate from the Pittsburgh School of Law in 1971, has been featured in an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette written by Robert Hill.
“…Long after those African American male victories, the University of Pittsburgh School of Law graduated its first Black woman in 1971. She is Martha Richards Conley, this writer’s 2021 Women’s History Month heroine.
She is a daughter of an overachieving family of great Americans that touches three centuries. In late 19th-century and early 20th-century Pittsburgh, Ms. Richards Conley’s great-grandfather, J.T. Writt, was a civic and business leader in Downtown Pittsburgh and later the east neighborhood of Homewood on Susquehanna Street. Mr. Writt kept Pittsburghers fat and happy as an African American caterer with a Black and white clientele.”
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