The New Deal was filled with a variety of actors who all played different roles in the development of American law and politics in the 1930s and 40s. Lawyers specifically played a unique role throughout this time. One of these lawyers was Anne Freeling Schlezinger, a young Jewish woman born to a family of immigrants, who had just started her legal career as the New Deal began to unfold. She had no specific power or prestige in her upbringing, making her career easy to overlook in the middle of one of the most defining eras of American history. Yet, her understudied career provides a clear story to better appreciate the path of female lawyers in the mid-twentieth century. Freeling had a unique experience in many ways, yet she faced the universal obstacles that women often faced in this time. Her career specifically showed that although the increase in government service jobs during the New Deal provided great opportunities for minority lawyers such as herself, it also had its downsides. This included getting stuck doing secretarial and other nonlegal work which could stall one’s career and the government agency’s susceptibility to investigation which put Freeling front and center in an extremely sexist congressional hearing. Gender discrimination was also prevalent in government service and Freeling was overlooked for a judicial appointment at the NLRB for many years as her less experienced male colleagues passed her by. Despite all of this, she navigated the struggles of a female lawyer during this time in a very human and revealing way.

To best understand Freeling’s career, it must be studied in three parts: her legal work during law school and with Charles E. Wyzanski Jr. at the Department of Labor and Department of Justice, her employment in the Review Division of the NLRB, and her return to work at the NLRB after World War II. These eras of her life highlighted the variety of challenges she faced and how her career progressed as the nation flowed through a variety of historical events.

Keep Reading Anne Freeling Schlezinger: A Woman’s Experience as a Lawyer in the New Deal