Jeannette Rosner Wolman (1902-1999)
MSA SC 3520-13569
Attorney, Civic Leader
Biography:
Born August 21, 1902, in New York City. Daughter of Adolph C. Rosner. Attended Goucher College; University of Maryland Law School, 1924. Admitted to Maryland bar, November 20, 1924. Married Paul Carroll Wolman (d. 1978), 1925. One son, Benjamin R. Wolman. Died January 17, 1999, in Baltimore, Maryland.
Jeannette Wolman's aspirations to join the legal community first surfaced while she was a high school student in Birmingham, Alabama. Wolman wrote to the dean of the Columbia University School of Law, and was informationed that the school did not accept women. Following her family's move to Baltimore, Wolman enrolled at Goucher College to study social work. Still desirous of a career in the law, Wolman enrolled at the University of Maryland School of Law, and became one of its first female graduates. Wolman attended night classes, working as a social worker during the day for the Jewish Children's Bureau. In 1927, Jeannette Rosner Wolman was a founding member of the Women Lawyer's Bar Association of Maryland. At this time, women in Maryland were barred from the established bar associations. Thirty years later, in 1957, Wolman became the first woman admitted to the Bar Association of Baltimore. In 1965, Wolman was appointed by Governor J. Millard Tawes, as the first chair of the Maryland Commission on the Status of Women. Wolman retired in 1989.
Wolman has received numerous honors, among them, induction into the Baltimore Women's Hall of Fame (1985) and the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame (1986). In 1991, she was among the first receipients for the American Bar Association's Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award.
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