Raymond Pace Alexander

Raymond Pace Alexander (October 19, 1898 – November 24, 1974) was a civil rights leader, Harvard-educated lawyer and the first African-American judge appointed to the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Many accounts of the black civil rights struggle in the United States focus on the large-scale events, urban rebellions and nationwide efforts that characterized the years after the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. But, in reality, some of the most notable and influential civil rights figures were local attorneys across the country who fought racial discrimination and broke down barriers in the courtrooms and in society during the first half of the 20th century, laying the groundwork for Brown and the more well-known movement that followed. Raymond Pace Alexander is one such figure who has too often been overlooked. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Alexander opened his own firm in his hometown of Philadelphia, where he not only became one of the most prominent attorneys, but also stood at the forefront of the city’s civil rights struggle.

Alexander was born into a working-class black family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on October 13, 1898. Raymond’s parents, like many African Americans in the 1860s and 1870s, had left the rural South looking for economic opportunities and an escape from the violence that accompanied Jim Crow. His father, Hillard Boone Alexander, was born a slave in Mecklenburg, Virginia, and had migrated to Philadelphia with his brother, Samuel, in 1880. That same year, Raymond’s mother, Virginia Pace, also migrated to Philadelphia with her brother, John Schollie Pace; they had been born slaves in Essex County, Virginia.

Hillard and Virginia married in Philadelphia in 1882. The city was in a period of transition at the time, and growth in population and infrastructure meant relatively greater economic opportunities for black citizens than existed in the rural South. When Raymond was born, his parents, like most of the city’s black population, lived in the Seventh Ward – though their home was located in the "fair to comfortable" section of the Ward on a predominantly white block. His father and uncle were entrepreneurs; they were "riding masters" who gave horseback riding lessons to some of the wealthiest whites in Philadelphia for about twenty years. But by 1915, the Seventh Ward’s black population had grown to such an extent that wealthy whites in Philadelphia were less and less interested in patronizing black businesses, and those in the black community who depended on white clientele – including Hillard Alexander and his brother – failed.

In 1909, when Alexander was eleven years old, his mother died of pneumonia. Although Alexander immediately began working to help support the family, his father felt unable to provide adequate care for the children and sent Alexander and his three siblings to live with their aunt and uncle, Georgia and John Pace, in a growing black community in North Philadelphia. The Paces were a working-class family as well and, recognizing that there were now even more mouths to feed, Alexander continued working through grade school and high school to help support himself and his siblings. In addition to school and church, he held a number of jobs during those years; he worked on the docks unloading fish, sold newspapers, and owned a bootblack stand where he worked six days per week for a time. Perhaps most significantly, Alexander worked at the Metropolitan Opera House in North Philadelphia for six years, beginning when he was 16 years old. While Alexander was delivering newspapers nearby one afternoon, he struck up a conversation with Jack Beresin, who provided concession services for the building, that culminated with a job offer. Later, looking back on his time at the Met, Alexander stated Beresin had "opened a new world for [him]," and he credited that swanky environment with giving him "some of the smoothness and culture which characterize[d] [his] later years."

After graduating from the prestigious all-boys Central High School in 1917 as Valedictorian, Alexander attended the University of Pennsylvania on a merit scholarship and became the first black graduate of the Wharton School of Business in 1920. He then enrolled at Harvard Law School and, after graduation in 1923, moved back to Philadelphia. That same year, he married his former Penn classmate Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander – who in 1927 would become the first black woman to earn a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

In addition to founding Philadelphia's premier black law firm, Alexander also served as the President of the National Bar Association from 1933 to 1935. He was elected to the Philadelphia City Council in 1951 and served there until 1958, before becoming the first black judge to be appointed to the city's Court of Common Pleas in 1959. He also associated as counsel for the NAACP in a number of high-profile cases, and played the leading role in ending de jure segregation in Pennsylvania public schools in the 1930s by successfully challenging the policies of two Chester County school districts in court.