Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander
Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander (1898–1989) was a pioneering lawyer and civil rights leader.
The Raymond Pace and Sadie TM Alexander Foundation provided this biography:
Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander was a pioneering economist, lawyer and civil rights activist.Through her scholarship, leadership and legal practice, Alexander made an indelible contribution to the advancement of social and economic justice for African-Americans in Pennsylvania and across the nation.
Alexander was born in Philadelphia in 1898. She attended high school at the M Street School in Washington, D.C. before returning to Philadelphia and continuing her studies at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1918, she received a Bachelor of Science in education and a Master of Science in economics a year later. When she earned a doctorate in economics from UPenn in 1921, she became one of the first of three African-American women to earn a Ph.D. from an American university.
Marginalized on account of her race and gender, Alexander tabled her work in economics and entered the University of Pennsylvania Law School. During her studies, she served as associate editor of the Law Review, the nation’s oldest legal journal. In 1927, she became the first Black woman to graduate from Penn’s law school and be admitted into the Pennsylvania bar. Alexander went on to join her husband’s (Raymond Pace Alexander) law firm, specializing in family law. Together, they worked tirelessly to help pass Pennsylvania's Equal Rights Bill of 1935 that ended segregation in the state’s public accommodations, including transit, restaurants, hotels and theaters.
She was appointed Assistant City Solicitor for the City of Philadelphia in 1928 and held that position for several non-consecutive terms. As a member of the John Mercer Langston Club in Philadelphia, Alexander helped to establish a legal aid bureau to provide pro bono assistance to Black people who could not afford to hire a lawyer. In 1947, she served on President Harry S. Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights to identify “more adequate and effective means and procedures” to ensure civil rights for all Americans. The resulting report, entitled, To Secure These Rights led to Truman’s Executive Order desegregating the federal government and armed services. The committee's findings also laid the foundation for the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Alexander later served as a founding member of President John F. Kennedy Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in 1963, which mobilized private attorneys to advance racial justice and civil rights through the legal system. Years later, President Jimmy Carter named her chairwoman of the White House Conference on Aging in 1978. In addition to serving on and chairing numerous boards and committees of local and national organizations over the course of her career, Alexander used her voice to foster fellowship and empowerment for Black women through her decades-long work as a legal advisor to the Delta Sigma Theta sorority and empowerment of Black Americans in general as secretary for the National Urban League and National Bar Association.