Kate Kane Rossi (1854-1928):
Kate Rossi was a Chicago attorney who, according to the 19 th century publication the Law Student’s Helper, announced herself a candidate for a Chicago or Illinois judgeship, saying “honest jurists are needed.” She hoped for a political party nomination. Nothing further is known about this effort to run for public office.
Party Affiliation:
Unknown
Photograph:
The Law Student's Helper Vol. 1, No. 5, May 1893
http://womenslegalhistory.stanford.edu/articles/Kkane.pdf
Resources:
The Law Student’s Helper , vol. 1, nos. 8, 10, and 12 (1893),
reprinted at: http://womenslegalhistory.stanford.edu/profiles/RossiKateKane.html
“Kate Kane Rossi: Militant Lawyer,”http://www.stanford.edu/group/WLHP/papers/rossi.html
[Additional Notes]:
Rossi began a law school education in 1876 at the University of Michigan but left after one year to apprentice with a lawyer in Janesville Wisconsin. One biographer speculates she made this decision after learning that Lavinia Goodell had just been admitted to the Janesville bar. Rossi joined the bar at Janesville and soon thereafter in Milwaukee, becoming that city’s first woman lawyer. She moved her law practice to Chicago in 1883. She gained a reputation as smart and militant. In 1890, the controversial religious skeptic and attorney Robert G. Ingersoll sponsored her for admission to the U.S. Supreme Court bar which put her in the company of other pioneering woman attorneys, including Belva Lockwood.
Although little is known about Rossi’s political activism, it is thought that she worked with Esther Dunshee Bower and attorney Catherine Waugh McCulloch to win passage of state legislation giving Illinois women the right to serve on juries. She also lobbied to have matrons appointed to look after women prisoners at Chicago’s police stations.