Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, 1898-1989

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At her Ph.D. graduation, University of Pennsylvania, 1921. Photo credit - Wikipedia

An economist and attorney. The first African-American woman in the US to earn a Ph.D. in economics, the first woman to receive a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and the first African-American woman to be admitted to the Pennsylvania bar.



Sadie Tanner Mossell was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A year after she was born, her father abandoned the family and moved to the UK. During high school, she moved to Washington, DC, where she lived with her relatives and attended M Street School. At 17, she returned to Philadelphia to study Education at the University of Pennsylvania. There, she suffered discrimination from both students and professors, and though she graduated with honors, she was denied joining Phi Beta Kappa. She continued her studies, and at 23, received her M.A in Economics, followed by a Ph.D. – becoming the second African-American woman in the USA to earn a doctoral degree and the first to receive a Ph.D. in Economics.

Despite her academic accolades, she struggled to get a professorship. Unable to find a job in Philadelphia, she moved to Durham, North Carolina, and worked for the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. At the time, she also served as the first national president of Delta Sigma Theta – the black women’s sorority. In 1923, she married the lawyer and civil rights leader Raymond Pace Alexander, and the couple moved back to Philadelphia. Once again, she had difficulties getting a job in the city, so she stayed home, concentrated on volunteering for a year, and then decided to go to law school.

At the age of 26, Alexander became the first African-American woman to study at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and two years later she became the first to graduate and to be admitted to the Pennsylvania bar – the first African-American person to hold both a Ph.D. and a J.D. Afterward, she joined her husband’s law firm as a partner, making them one of the early married legal teams in the USA. As an attorney, Alexander advocated against segregation, racial discrimination, and employment inequality. As a partner, she helped draft the Pennsylvania state Public Accommodations Law of 1935, prohibiting discrimination in public places.

At 30, Alexander added another “First” to her list when she was appointed the first African-American woman Assistant City Solicitor for the City of Philadelphia. During the two inconsecutive terms in this position (1928-1930 and 1934-1938), she established a legal aid bureau that assisted African-Americans who could not afford attorneys. In 1930, Alexander served as secretary for the National Urban League, a position she held for 27 years. In 1943, Alexander was chosen as secretary of the National Bar Association, becoming, once again, the first woman in this position. In 1947, President Harry Truman appointed her to his Committee on Human Rights, and in 1952 she began her 12 years term on Philadelphia’s Commission on Human Relations.

At the age of 61, after her husband was appointed to the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia, Alexander opened her law firm, continuing to practice law for the next 15 years. At 78, she joined Atkinson, Myers, and Archie law firm as a general counsel until her retirement at 84. Alexander passed away at the age of 91 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease.

America's First Black Economist

Eighty years ago, Sadie Alexander was writing on the devaluation of household work, a topic that has only recently been covered by graduate economics programs. That’s just one of the ways the pioneering economist was ahead of her time, says Bucknell University professor Nina Banks. Alexander recognized the importance of black and white workers joining together in solidarity and unionizing, and saw a federal full employment program as economically vital. Alexander is one of many early feminist economists whose writings and ideas Banks believes we must revisit.

Banks also discusses her other research projects, including her analysis of women’s (and especially women of color’s) unpaid work—not just in the house, but also as activists in the community.

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“I never looked for anybody to hold the door open for me. I knew well that the only way I could get that door open was to knock it down: because I knocked all of them down.”

“I never looked for anybody to hold the door open for me. I knew well that the only way I could get that door open was to knock it down: because I knocked all of them down.”

Fun Facts

  • Her father, Aaron Albert Mossell II, was the first African-American to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
  • Her maternal grandfather, Benjamin Tucker Tanner, was the bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.
  • Her uncle was the esteemed painter Henry Ossawa Tanner.
  • Her doctoral dissertation was titled “The Standard of Living Among One Hundred Negro Migrant Families in Philadelphia.”
  • She had four premature children; only two survived to adulthood.
  • In 1948 she was featured as “Woman of the Year” in the National Urban League’s comic book of Negro Heroes.
  • The Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander University of Pennsylvania Partnership School is named in her honor.
  • The Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professorship at the University of Pennsylvania is named in her honor.

Awards

  • Granted membership into Phi Beta Kappa – the honor she had been denied as an undergraduate (1970)
  • Honorary doctorate by the University of Pennsylvania (1974)
  • The Distinguished Service Award from the University of Pennsylvania's Law School (1980)

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America's First Black Economist

Eighty years ago, Sadie Alexander was writing on the devaluation of household work, a topic that has only recently been covered by graduate economics programs. That’s just one of the ways the pioneering economist was ahead of her time, says Bucknell University professor Nina Banks. Alexander recognized the importance of black and white workers joining together in solidarity and unionizing, and saw a federal full employment program as economically vital. Alexander is one of many early feminist economists whose writings and ideas Banks believes we must revisit.

Banks also discusses her other research projects, including her analysis of women’s (and especially women of color’s) unpaid work—not just in the house, but also as activists in the community.
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Category: Economics & Finance and Law
Tags: African-American Women and Lawyer

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Alice Coachman WWP
Sports

Alice Coachman, 1923-2014

High jump athlete, the first African-American woman to win an Olympic gold medal.

Alice Coachman was born in Albany, Georgia. While in elementary school, her teacher and aunt noticed her athletic skills and encouraged her to practice sports despite her parents’ objections. As a girl in the segregated south, Coachman had no access to athletic training facilities or the opportunity to compete in organized sports events (due to color and gender). Determine to develop her natural talent, Coachman used everything available to her – running with no shoes in fields and dirt roads and making high jump crossbars out of rope and sticks. During high school, Coachman caught the attention of the boys’ track coach, who took her under his wings and coached her. Within a year, she was spotted by a recruiter from Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, and at 15, she got a scholarship. Her unusual jumping style, combined western roll, and straight jumping techniques helped her win the national championships in the next nine years. In 1939, at the age of 16, she started her scholarship at the Tuskegee Preparatory School, which in addition to studying and practicing, required mending uniforms and cleaning the school’s sports facilities. During this period, she won high jumps companions and national championships in the 50-meter dash, 100-meter dash, and the 400-meter relay team. She also won three conference championships as a guard on the women’s basketball team. At 23, Coachman received her degree in dressmaking and continued her education at Albany State College, where she studied Home Economics and science. In her late teens and early 20s, the years that were supposed to be the pick of her career, the Olympic Games were canceled because of WW2. Her first global stage appearance was made possible at the 1948 Olympic Games in London. On her Olympic tryouts, Coachman qualified to the US team with a high jump of 5 feet 4 inches, breaking the previous record by ¾ inch. At the Olympics high jump finals, she reached first place with a leap of 5 feet and 6⅛ inches on her first try, becoming the first black woman to win the gold medal and the only American woman to win a gold medal at the 1948 Games. On her return to the US, Coachman became a celebrity, she met President Truman and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and various parades were held in her honor. Following the Olympic Games, 24 years old Coachman retired from her athlete career, with 34 national titles under her belt. She finished her degree at Albany State College and became a teacher and track-and-field instructor. In 1952, at the age of 29, she made history again when she signed as Coca-Cola Company’s spokesperson, becoming the first African-American woman to endorse an international product. In 1994, at 71, she established the Alice Coachman Track and Field Foundation. This non-profit organization supports young athletes in starting their careers and helps Olympic veterans adjust to life after retainment. Coachman died at the age of 90 of cardiac arrest. Share:This post is also available in: Español Read more...
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Literature & Poetry

Alice Dunbar Nelson, 1875-1935

A poet, journalist, playwright, and political activist. Associated with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

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Literature & Poetry

Alice Walker, 1944

A novelist, poet, and social activist. The first African-American woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia, the youngest of eight children of sharecroppers. At 8, she was injured in her eye after her brother played with a BB gun, causing her permanent blindness in one eye. The mark on her eye made her an easy target to her classmates, so she turned to poetry for comfort. Growing up in the segregated south, she attended an only black kids’ high school, from which she graduated valedictorian. Her high scores granted her a full scholarship to Spelman College, where she studied for two years before transferring to Sarah Lawrence College in NYC. In this period, Walker had an abortion which caused her suicidal thoughts. She wrote all about it in her poems. In 1965, at the age of 21, Walker moved to Jackson, Mississippi, and became active in the civil rights movement. She worked for the Legal Defense Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and as a consultant in black history to the Friends of the Children of Mississippi Head Start program while serving as writer-in-residence in various academic institutes publishing essays and short stories. At 23, she married Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights attorney. At the time, interracial marriage was illegal in the south, and the couple had to travel to NYC to get married. On their return, they became the first legally married interracial couple in Mississippi since 1822, when the miscegenation laws passed. During their nine years of marriage, they suffered recurring harassment from the Ku Klux Klan. In 1970, at 26, Walker published her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, following the life of an abusive sharecropper husband and father. Three years later, she was appointed editor of Ms. Magazine, published her second poetry collection and her first collection of short stories. In 1976, Walker returned to NYC and published her second novel Meridian, about several civil rights activists in the south during the 1960s. In the late 1970s, she moved to California, where she wrote her best-known work, The Color Purple. Published in 1982, the novel explores the struggles of a black woman in the racist and patriarchal society of 1900s Georgia. The book was a best-seller, and in the following year, 39 years old Walker became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Later the novel was adapted into a film featuring Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg and a Broadway musical produced by Quincy Jones and Oprah Winfrey. In 1984, she co-founded the feminist publishing company Wild Tree Press. She deepened the world of some of her characters from The Color Purple in two of her novels, The Temple of My Familiar and Possessing the Secret of Joy, and created new characters that allowed her to delve into other social issues, such as female sexuality in By the Light of My Father’s Smile from 1998, and identity questions in Now Are the Time to Open Your Heart from 2005. Throughout the decades, Walker published seven novels, ten poetry collections, four short stories collections, four children’s books, and a dozen collections of essays and articles. In all of her work, Walker deals with the struggles of black people, especially women, and their experiences in sexist, racist, and violent surroundings. Often using Black vernacular, which highlights the hundreds of years of slavery and oppression, she had dealt with complex topics such as rape, isolation, bisexuality, and troubled relationships within the black community. Walker is a long-time social and political activist, promoting and fighting for various causes, from black and women’s rights to environmental issues, Palestinians’ fight for independence, and the elimination of female genital mutilation. Share:This post is also available in: Español Read more...
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Music

Alicia Keys, 1981

Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter, producer, and actress.

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