Alexander family.

Raymond Pace Alexander (1897-1974) and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander (1898-1989) were pioneers among African Americans in the legal profession and leaders in public affairs, politics, and government throughout the middle half of the twentieth century.

Raymond Pace Alexander, lawyer, judge, civil rights leader, and civic leader, was born in Philadelphia into a large working class family. His mother died shortly after the birth of his youngest sibling, and as a result Raymond was self-supporting from the age of twelve. He graduate from Central High School in 1917, from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1920, and from Harvard Law School in 1923. Admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 1923, Alexander specialized in criminal law and worked in the firm of John R.K. Scott. He married Sadie Tanner Mossell in November of 1923.

From 1949 to 1951 he was active in the Clark-Dilworth reform democratic movement, supporting the Home Rule Charter for Philadelphia. In 1951 he won election to City Council and was re-elected in 1955. In January of 1959 he was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Court of Common Pleas, No. 4 and was elected to a ten year term the following November. From 1970 until his death in 1974 he served as Senior Judge.

Dr. Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, lawyer, civil rights leader, and civic leader was born in Philadelphia into a well known upper, middle-class family. Sadie graduated from M Street High School in Washington, D.C. in 1916, from the University of Pennsylvania with her A.B. in 1918, her M.A. in 1919, and her Ph.D. in 1921. After working as an assistant actuary for the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, she returned to Philadelphia in 1923 and married Raymond Pace Alexander. In 1927 she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the first African American woman to do so at the University. Continuing in her succession of firsts, she was the first African American woman to practice law in Pennsylvania.

Sadie joined in practice with Raymond Alexander and specialized in estate and family law. She served as Secretary to the National Bar Association; she also served on Truman's Committee on Civil Rights, the committee responsible for producing the planning document entitled, To Secure These Rights. Sadie worked on local civil rights assignments, notably as chair of the committee responsible for the formation of the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations of the Home Rule Charter. Her national stature was recognized when President Jimmy Carter appointed her chair of the White House Conference on Aging in 1978; she was removed from this committee by Ronald Reagan in 1981. Sadie and Raymond had two children, Rae Pace and Mary Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Mossell Anderson, Sadie's elder sister, served as Dean of Women at Virginia State College and later at Wilburforce University, Ohio. Upon her retirement in 1964, she came to live with the Alexanders in Philadelphia, residing with them until her death in 1975.

Virginia Margaret Alexander, Raymond's younger sister, became close friends with Sadie while attending the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate. She later attended the Medical College of Pennsylvania and practiced medicine there, specializing in gynecology, until her death in 1949.

From the description of Papers, 1912-1983. (University of Pennsylvania). WorldCat record id: 122614786