Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
Eli Samuel Parker, a Seneca leader and Civil War officer who served under President Ulysses S. Grant, was posthumously admitted to the New York State Bar on Friday, a feat denied him in life because he was native American,
His entry inside a formal courtroom Buffalo The effort continued for years 130 years after his death by his descendants, who saw the bitter irony in the fact that an important figure in American history was never seen as an American citizen, then required to practice law.
“Today … we correct that injustice,” Parker’s great-granddaughter Melissa Parker Leonard told the audience, which also included judges from several New York courts. “We accept that the failure was never theirs. It was the law itself.”
Parker was at Grant’s side in General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in 1865. VirginiaCourthouse, where he was tasked with writing down the final terms signed by the generals. Grant later selected Parker, then a brigadier general, as Commissioner of Indian Affairs, making him the first Native American to serve in the 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.
Presiding Judge Gerald Whalen of the Fourth Appellate Division said before finalizing admission, “Even a cursory review of his biography will reveal that Mr. Parker was not only clearly qualified for admission to the bar, but that he truly exemplified the best and highest ideals of the legal profession which the bar represents.”
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, where he went by Eli Samuel Parker instead of his Seneca name, Hasanonda, 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.
Native Americans were granted citizenship in 1924.
“Today is a victory for Eli, but it is also a victory for all of us,” said Lee Redeye, deputy attorney for the Seneca Nation of Indians, “as we triumph over the prejudice of the past.”
Unable to practice law, Parker became a civil engineer but continued to use his legal training to help the 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 widely recognized for his Civil War service, first serving as Grant’s military secretary. Parker and Grant met and became friends in Galena, Illinoiswhere Grant’s home stood and where Parker, then an engineer for the U.S. Treasury Department, was supervising the construction of a federal building.
Parker died in 1895 and was buried in Buffalo’s Forest Lawn Cemetery.
“This moment is very personal for our family. It makes Eli realize that he did his best and that his best performance changed the course of our history,” Leonard said Friday.