Martha Gadley’s marriage was a nightmare. When her husband drank, he turned increasingly violent. One night, he used an ax to chop a hole in the floor and threatened to push her into the room below. He refused to bring her water when she was sick. When she left the house, he nailed up the entrance and put padlocks on the door.
Martha had had enough. She decided to file for divorce—a gutsy move for an illiterate Black woman. But it was 1875, and the law cared little about domestic violence. Her petition was turned down and her case dismissed. So she took the unusual move of taking her divorce to a higher court—and found a champion in an equally unusual attorney, Charlotte E. Ray.
For Charlotte Ray, who was raised in a progressive family, education was the key to her dream of becoming a lawyer. Her father, Charles Bennett Ray, was a prominent abolitionist and clergyman who edited The Colored American, one of the first newspapers published by and for African-Americans. Charles knew the value of education and enrolled his daughter in the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth, one of the only schools that would teach young Black women. Though the school taught domestic skills, it was also focused on training teachers and Charlotte went on to enroll in Howard University as a teacher trainee. But Ray had other dreams.