Ely Samuel Parker, a Seneca leader and Civil War officer who served in President Ulysses S. Grant\u2019s cabinet, was posthumously admitted Friday to the New York State Bar, an achievement denied him in life because he was Native American.<\/p>\n
His admission inside a ceremonial courtroom in Buffalo 130 years after his death followed a yearslong effort by his descendants, who saw bitter irony in the fact that an important figure in U.S. history was never seen as a U.S. citizen, then a requirement to practice law.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday \u2026 we correct that injustice,\u201d Melissa Parker Leonard, a great-great-great-grandniece of Parker\u2019s, said to an audience that included robed judges from several New York courts. \u201cWe acknowledge that the failure was never his. It was the law itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parker was at Grant\u2019s side for Gen. Robert E. Lee\u2019s 1865 surrender at the Appomattox, Virginia, courthouse, where he was tasked with writing out the final terms that the generals signed. Grant later chose Parker, by then a brigadier general, to be commissioner of Indian Affairs, making him the first Native American to serve in the position.<\/p>\n
He is also the first Native American to be posthumously admitted to the bar, said retired Judge John Browning, who worked on the application.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven a cursory review of his biography will show that Mr. Parker was not only clearly qualified for admission to the bar, but he in fact exemplified the best and highest ideals of the legal profession that the bar represents,\u201d Judge Gerald Whalen, the presiding justice of the 4th Appellate Division, said before finalizing the admission.<\/p>\n
Parker was born on the Seneca Nation of Indians\u2019 Tonawanda reservation outside Buffalo in 1828. He was educated at a Baptist mission school, where he went by Ely Samuel Parker instead of his Seneca name, Hasanoanda, and studied law at a firm in Ellicottville, New York. His admission to the bar was denied at a time when only natural-born or naturalized citizens could be admitted.<\/p>\n
Native Americans were granted citizenship in 1924.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday is Ely\u2019s triumph, but it is also all of ours, too,\u201d said Lee Redeye, deputy counsel for the Seneca Nation of Indians, \u201cfor we stand victorious over the prejudice of the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unable to practice law, Parker became a civil engineer but continued to use his legal training to help the Seneca defend their land, partnering with attorney John Martindale to win victories in the New York Court of Appeals and U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
But he is most widely recognized for his Civil War service, first serving as Grant\u2019s military secretary. Parker and Grant had met and become friends in Galena, Illinois, where Grant had a home and where Parker, then an engineer for the U.S. Treasury Department, was supervising construction of a federal building.<\/p>\n
Parker died in 1895 and is buried in Buffalo\u2019s Forest Lawn Cemetery.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis moment is deeply personal for our family. It allows Ely to rest in the knowledge that he did his best,\u201d Leonard said Friday, \u201cand that his best changed the course of our history.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ely Samuel Parker, a Seneca leader and Civil War officer who served in President Ulysses S. Grant\u2019s cabinet,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[881,20777,1768,9,11,10],"class_list":{"0":"post-40701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-history","9":"tag-legal","10":"tag-native-americans","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}