Pearl M. Hart

Pearl M. Hart was a Chicago attorney notable for her work defending oppressed minority groups. Hart was the first woman in Chicago to be appointed Public Defender in the Morals Court. Most notably, she represented children, women, immigrants, lesbians, and gay men, often without fee or for a nominal fee. She attended the John Marshall Law School and was admitted to the Illinois State Bar in 1914.

In the 1950s, Hart focused on defending immigrants in deportation proceedings. In U.S. v. Witkovish, which she took to the United States Supreme Court, the high court agreed with her contention that the Attorney Generals power to question aliens subject to deportation was limited by constitutional safeguards. She stated, ...I defend the foreign born against the present deportation hysteria because of a consciousness that it was the foreign born and their children who built this nation of ours and who have been its most loyal partisans.

Source: Wikipedia