Biography:

Raymond Pace Alexander (1898-1974) accomplished much throughout his life, including a significant number of firsts. As a young boy, he took his first job unloading fish on the docks of Philadelphia to help support his family. He also sold newspapers. As an adolescent, Alexander attended the prestigious Central High School, graduating in 1917 as Valedictorian. On a merit scholarship, he next studied at the University of Pennsylvania, where he co-founded the African American chapter of the Psi Alpha Phi Alpha. Upon his graduation in 1920, Alexander became the first black graduate of Penn’s Wharton School of Business. He furthered his studies at Harvard Law School, and around 1923 he successfully sat for the Pennsylvania Bar examination. That same year, he married his former Penn classmate Sadie Tanner Mossell (1898-1989). Four years later, she became the school’s first black woman to earn a law degree.
 
During the late 1920s and late 1930s, Alexander was one of thirteen black attorneys practicing law in Philadelphia. He took on many desegregation and criminal cases, winning significant decisions in each. In regard to the former, Alexander represented black parents from Chester County, Pennsylvania, who were fighting against school segregation in 1933. The school district decided to build a new elementary school, while keeping the old Easttown elementary school open “for the instruction of certain people,” a covert implication of black students. Alexander won the case, which ended de jure segregation of schools in Pennsylvania. Impressed by his victory, the Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDEF) of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) hired Alexander to handle the appeal of two defendants in what became known as the “Trenton Six Case” of 1948. Arguing that the alleged confession of each of his defendants was “beyond his education level,” Alexander proved his clients were falsely accused of the murder of a white store clerk.
 
In 1951, Alexander was elected City Councilman and held his position for eight years. In 1959, he accomplished his lifelong goal to become the first black judge in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia. During his ten-year term, Alexander utilized the law and his judicial status to obtain civil rights for the African American community, as well as improve race relations. During the last four years of his life, he served as a senior judge.