Raymond Pace Alexander
Raymond Pace Alexander was an American civil rights leader, lawyer, politician, and the first African American judge appointed to the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas. Born and raised in Philadelphia, he became the first black graduate of the Wharton School of Business in 1920. After graduation from Harvard Law School in 1923, Alexander became one of the leading civil rights attorneys in Philadelphia. He gained prominence as a black lawyer willing to fight for equal rights in the [|Berwyn desegregation case] and represented black defendants in other high-profile cases, including the Trenton Six, a group of black men arrested for murder in Trenton, New Jersey.
Alexander began his involvement in politics with unsuccessful runs for a judgeship on the Court of Common Pleas in 1933 and 1937. In 1949 he was considered by President Harry S. Truman for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He finally won a seat on the Philadelphia City Council in 1951. After two terms on the city council, Alexander was appointed to a seat on the Court of Common Pleas and was re-elected to a ten-year term as a judge in 1959. He continued to work for racial equality throughout his time in the municipal government. Alexander assumed senior status at mandatory retirement age in 1969 and died in 1974. His legacy is honored by a professorship at the University of Pennsylvania.
Early life and education
Alexander was born into a working-class black family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on October 13, 1897. His 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 the Jim Crow segregation system in place there. His father, Hillard Boone Alexander, was born a slave in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, and was the son of the plantation owner. He 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 family, like most of the city's black population, lived in the Seventh Ward in what is called Center City today. W. E. B. Du Bois called the area in which the Alexanders lived the "fair and comfortable" part of the neighborhood. Alexander's father and uncle were "riding masters" who gave horseback riding lessons to wealthy white people in Philadelphia and its suburbs along the Main Line, but by 1915 the emergence of the automobile era led the business to decline and ultimately fail.
In 1909, Alexander's 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 so with even more mouths to feed, Alexander continued working through grade school and high school to help support himself and his siblings. Jobs he held during those years included working on the docks unloading fish, selling newspapers, and owning a bootblack stand where he worked six days per week. Alexander also worked at the Metropolitan Opera House in North Philadelphia for six years, beginning when he was 16 years old. Later, looking back on his time at the Opera House, Alexander said that it had "opened a new world for me", and he credited that environment with giving him "some of the smoothness and culture which characterizes my later years".
Alexander attended Central High School and graduated in 1917, delivering a speech "The Future of the American Negro", at the commencement ceremony. He enrolled at 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. While there, Alexander earned a living by working as a teaching assistant during the school year. In the summers, he took classes for a master's degree in political science at Columbia University, though he did not finish the degree. At Columbia, Alexander supported himself by working as a porter for the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. While still in law school, Alexander brought his first discrimination lawsuit, suing Madison Square Garden for refusing him entry on account of his race, a violation of New York's equal rights law. As he was not yet admitted to the bar, Alexander hired black Harvard Law School graduate attorney James D. McLendon Jr., to represent him.
Legal career
Alexander graduated from Harvard Law in 1923. That same year, he married his former Penn classmate Sadie Tanner Mossell. Mossell was the granddaughter of Benjamin Tucker Tanner and in 1927 became the first black woman to earn a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania. They had two daughters, Rae and Mary. He passed the Pennsylvania bar exam in 1923, becoming one of a few black lawyers in the state. Despite his credentials, Alexander had difficulty finding a job in Philadelphia after graduation. Ultimately, he took a position in the law office of John R. K. Scott, a white Republican former congressman with a small office in the city. Shortly thereafter, he opened his own office with a focus on representing black people.He soon rose to prominence in Philadelphia's black community. In 1924, he represented Louise Thomas, a black woman accused of murdering a black policeman. After she was convicted and sentenced to death, Alexander secured her a new trial. In a new trial before the same judge, Thomas was found not guilty, which Alexander's biographer, David A. Canton, described as "a landmark in Pennsylvania legal history". That same year, he filed an anti-discrimination lawsuit against a movie theater owner in Philadelphia who refused admission to black ticketholders. He lost the case, but it nonetheless raised his profile as a black lawyer willing to fight for equal rights. Around this time, Alexander began to identify with the black intellectual "New Negro" movement, which advocated self-help, racial pride, and protest against injustice. He also joined the National Bar Association, an association of black lawyers that had formed when its founding members were denied membership in the American Bar Association. Through the NBA, Alexander began to use political protest as well as legal action in the struggle for equal rights. His firm, which now included his wife and Maceo W. Hubbard, relocated to a new building at 19th and Chestnut Streets.
Berwyn desegregation case
In 1932, Alexander became involved with the Berwyn School Fight to desegregate the schools in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. After Easttown Township built a new elementary school, neighboring Tredyffrin Township closed its school and paid to send its students to Easttown. Easttown converted its old school building into one "for the instruction of certain people", which in practice meant all black students in the district, segregating the previously integrated schools. As a result, 212 African American students began to boycott the public schools. The families hired Alexander to press the issue in court.With the assistance of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Alexander negotiated with the school board, attempting to end the boycott, but the stalemate continued into 1933. Tensions increased as the state Attorney General, William A. Schnader, ordered the black parents prosecuted for refusing to send their children to school. Some refused to pay bail and stayed in prison as a protest. Alexander approved of the strategy, while the NAACP thought it too confrontational; they also objected to Alexander's acceptance of help from International Labor Defense lawyers, fearing association with the far-left group.
As the boycott dragged on into 1934, groups organized protest marches in Philadelphia. Schnader, now running for governor, promised to find a solution. Alexander and others credited Schnader's newfound support for their campaign to his recognition of the growing influence of black voters in Pennsylvania. By June, the school board agreed to allow students to be admitted to the two schools on a race-neutral basis, and the parents ended their boycott. The following year, the state passed a strengthened equal rights bill that covered all public accommodations, including schools, and allowed private lawyers to sue segregated businesses. It was introduced by state representative Hobson R. Reynolds, a black Republican from Philadelphia.
Growing prestige
Alexander rose to national prominence in the black legal community after the Berwyn case, and he began to speak around the country at NBA events, serving as the organization's president from 1933 to 1935. In 1942, he represented Thomas Mattox, a black teenager, as Mattox fought extradition to Georgia where he was accused of assaulting a white man. Alexander argued that Mattox would not receive a fair trial in the South, and the judge agreed, quashing the extradition attempt. He also represented Corrine Sykes, a 23-year-old black maid who was charged with murdering her white employer. This time, Alexander was unsuccessful, as the jury disregarded his arguments that Sykes was mentally impaired and found her guilty. After appeals to the Supreme Court of the United States were denied, Sykes was executed in 1946.Trenton Six
In 1948, Alexander became involved with the case of the Trenton Six, a group of black men arrested in Trenton, New Jersey, accused of robbery and murder. Trenton police induced confessions from five of the six, and all were convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to death. The Civil Rights Congress, the legal arm of the Communist Party USA, represented three of the men during their appeal; the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, at the request of their chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall, hired Alexander to represent two of the others. In 1949, the Supreme Court of New Jersey granted the men a new trial but prohibited the CRC from representing any of the defendants because they found that the group had unfairly influenced jury pools through the news media.In the 1951 re-trial, Alexander established that the police had manufactured evidence in order to secure a quick conviction and quiet public concerns about the crime wave then rippling through Trenton. The judge also ruled out the confessions, which were proved to have been coerced. After a lengthy trial, four were acquitted and two convicted, with the jury recommending life imprisonment. Though not a complete victory, Alexander had demonstrated his skill as a lawyer and saved the lives of his clients, while managing to distance himself from the CRC and other communist groups, an important consideration in the Cold War atmosphere.