Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander

Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander was a pioneer among Black women in United States law and education, and a committed civil rights activist. She was born in Philadelphia into an accomplished family. She was educated in Philadelphia and Washington D.C. Alexander graduated from M Street High School (now Dunbar high school) in Washington, and entered the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Education in 1915. Graduating in 1918, she helped found the gamma Chapter of the Delta Theta Sorority.

She earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics by 1921, and was one of the first African-Americans to receive a doctorate in economics. She became an actuary for the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Co. in Durham, NC and she married Raymond Pace Alexander.

Together they worked tirelessly in numerous Philadelphia-area civil rights cases. In 1943, she became the first woman to be elected secretary (or hold any office) in the National Bar Association, a position she held for four years. President Harry Truman appointed her to his Commission on Civil Rights in 1946. In 1948, Alexander helped prepare the report “To Secure These Rights,” a document that was influential in the foundation of the civil rights policy in the years that followed.

She joined the law firm of Atkinson, Myers, Archie & Wallace as counsel in 1976. Sadie Alexander died in her hometown in 1989.

Source:
Reference Library of Black America, Volumes 1 through 5
Edited by Mpho Mabunda
Copyright 1998, Gale Research, Detroit, MI