Sarah Tanner Mossell Alexander was born into a distinguished family on January 2, 1898 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. history skipped over her. Let's meet her:
Her grandfather was Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner (1835-1923), editor of the Christian Recorder and the AME Church Review. Her uncle was surgeon Dr. Nathan F. Mossell (1856-1946), founder of the Frederick Douglass Hospital (now Mercy-Douglass Hospital), and her aunt, Dr. Hallie Tanner Johnson (1864-1901), founded Tuskegee Institute’s Nurses’ School & Hospital. Other uncles were the painter, Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) and Lewis Baxter Moore (1866-1928), Dean of Howard University.
Before entering law school, Alexander served as the first national president of the black
women's sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, from 1919 to 1923. In 1924, she became the first black woman enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law. She graduated with honors in 1927 and was the first black woman to gain admission into the Pennsylvania bar. Alexander was the first African American to hold both a Ph.D. and a J.D. degree. She joined her husband’s law firm, making them one of the earliest husband and wife legal teams in the country. She began working on cases in the Orphans’ Court and later advocated against racial discrimination, segregation, and employment inequality.
She was the first Moor to practice law in Pennsylvania.
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