Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander (1898-1989) became the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and in 1927 became the first Black woman to be admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar. Previously she had been one of the first three women in the U.S. to earn a doctoral degree and was the first to earn a doctorate in Economics.
Mossell Alexander was born into a distinguished family—her father was the first African American to earn a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and her uncle, Nathan Francis Mossell, was the first to graduate from Penn’s Medical School.
She became nationally known after serving on President Truman’s Committee on Human Rights and was later appointed by President Carter as chair to the White House Council on Aging. She was also elected to serve as Delta Sigma Theta’s first national president.
Read more about Saide Tanner Mossell Alexander in the Penn Archives.