Civil War general and Seneca leader Ely Samuel Parker posthumously admitted to New York State Bar
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Ely Samuel Parker, a Seneca leader and Civil War officer who served in President Ulysses S. Grant’s cabinet, was posthumously admitted to the New York State Bar on Friday; this was a feat he was denied in his life because he was Native American.
His ceremonial admission to a courtroom in Buffalo, 130 years after his death, came after years of efforts by his descendants, who saw a bitter irony in the fact that a key figure in U.S. history was never considered a U.S. citizen nor required to practice law.
“Today … we are righting this injustice,” Parker’s great-great-great-great niece, Melissa Parker Leonard, told an audience that included robed judges from various New York courts. “We accept that the failure was never his own. It was the law itself.”
Parker was at Grant’s side during General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at the Appomattox, Virginia, courthouse in 1865, where he was assigned to write the final terms the generals signed. Grant then selected Parker, then a brigadier general, as commissioner of Indian Affairs, making him the first Native American to serve in that position.
He is also the first Native American to be posthumously admitted to the bar, said retired Judge John Browning, who worked on the application.
“Even a cursory review of his biography will show that Mr. Parker is not only clearly qualified for admission to the bar, but also exemplifies the best and highest ideals of the legal profession that the bar represents,” Judge Gerald Whalen, presiding judge of the 4th Appellate Circuit, said before concluding the admission.
Parker was born in 1828 on the Tonawanda reservation of the Seneca Nation of Indians outside Buffalo. He was educated at a Baptist mission school; here Seneca used the name Ely Samuel Parker rather than the name Hasanoanda and studied law at a firm in Ellicottville, New York. He was denied admission to the bar at a time when only natural-born or naturalized citizens could be admitted.
Native Americans were granted citizenship in 1924.
“Today is Ely’s victory, but it’s also a victory for all of us,” said Lee Redeye, deputy counsel of the Seneca Indian Nation, “because we have triumphed over the prejudices of the past.”
Unable to practice law, Parker became a civil engineer but continued to use his legal education to help Seneca defend their lands, partnering with attorney John Martindale to win victories in the New York Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.
But he is best known for his Civil War service; he first served as Grant’s 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 overseeing construction of a federal building.
Parker died in 1895 and was buried in Buffalo’s Forest Lawn Cemetery.
“This moment is deeply personal for our family. It allows Ely to rest knowing that he did his best and his best changed the course of our history,” Leonard said Friday.
