[Rush v. Thompson, 53 S.W. 333, pages 333-35 (Indian Terr. 1899)]

Alyne Queener Massey Law School Library

Most of the dozen Cherokee and Chickasaw students who attended Vanderbilt in the nineteenth century became lawyers.  Rush v. Thompson, a routine land claim litigated by William Wirt Hastings and William Pressley Thompson, was one of many cases that Vanderbilt alumni argued in Cherokee and Chickasaw courts, Oklahoma courts, and the federal courts of Indian Territory and Oklahoma, and the U.S. Supreme Court.  Several of the alumni practiced law together.  Congress disrupted their professional lives when they dissolved the tribal courts before Oklahoma statehood, prompting them to move and form new partnerships.