"1797 Lucy Terry Prince of Vermont, born in Africa, enslaved in the U.S., and freed via purchase by her husband, appears in a property dispute before the U.S. Supreme Court regarding some farmland. The future governor of Vermont, Isaac Tichnor, is her attorney, but Prince presents the oral argument herself. She wins, and Justice Samuel Chase compliments her skill. She is best known to modern historians as a poet rather than as the first woman and possibly the first African-American to argue before the Supreme Court."*