Virginia Margaret Alexander was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on February 4, 1899 to Hilliard Alexander and Virginia Pace, who were both born into slavery in the US. She had four siblings, including the prominent attorney Raymond Pace Alexander. She became close friends with Sadie Mossell during their undergraduate years at the University of Pennsylvania, and it was through Virginia that Sadie and Raymond met. After college, Virginia Alexander attended the Medical College of Pennsylvania and then completed her internship at Kansas City General Hospital.
In 1923 Dr. Alexander began her practice of diagnostic medicine in North Philadelphia. In 1935 she was responsible for bringing Dr. Helen O. Dickens to Philadelphia to join her in the practice of medicine. Later, after graduate work at Yale University School of Medicine, Virginia Alexander entered the field of public health, serving as medical advisor for Howard University from 1937 to 1941 and then, during World War II, with the United States Public Health Service. When she returned to Philadelphia after the war, she specialized in obstetrics and gynecology, serving on the staffs of the Woman’s Medical College Hospital, Pennsylvania Hospital and Mercy-Douglass Hospital until her death from Lupus in 1949.
