Beulah Wheeler was the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Iowa's College of Law in 1921.
Beulah Wheeler appears to be from Marshalltown, Iowa.
In May 1921, her short story "Soapsud Dreams" won second place in a university-held short story contest, which she described as a study in realism. Her speech âÂÂUniform Marriage and Divorce Law" won first place in the Women's Extemporaneous Speech Contest hosted by the women's Forensic League with a prize money award of $10. Her photo was featured in the 1922 Hawkeye for winning first place. She also won athletic awards for playing basketball and volleyball. Though she graduated in 1921, she reportedly did not receive her law degree until forty-one years later.
The Iowa Bystander, a four-page weekly to serve as the voice of Iowa's African American community, featured Wheeler in an article in 1920. When she was a student at Iowa State College, she was noted to have "quadrupled" the subscriptions to the periodical for Topeka, Kansas.
The Daily Iowan reported that she was one of two women taking the bar examinations, reported on June 11, 1924.
After school, she moved to Leavenworth, Kansas, for three years and then to Chicago, where she practiced law.