Since 1851, obituaries in The New York Times have been dominated by white men. With Overlooked, we’re adding the stories of remarkable people whose deaths went unreported in The Times.

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Laura de Force Gordon was speaking from experience when, in 1893, she described in a speech how “society has sneered at learned women.”

Gordon, a suffragist, journalist and lawyer, had spent several decades establishing herself in fields that had been historically limited to men, and was frequently met with scorn and opposition.

When she was barred from attending law school in 1878, she was told it was because “rustling skirts” distracted the male students. When she became the second woman admitted to the Supreme Court bar in 1885, a newspaper lamented “hens” piping “shrill clarions” at the justices. And in 1889, as she worked to advocate for women’s suffrage, another newspaper dismissed her as an “apostle of discontent for the profit she can make out of it.”