Raymond Pace Alexander

Early life and education

Alexander was born into a working-class black family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on October 13, 1898. 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 Jim Crow. His father, Hillard Boone Alexander, was born a slave in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, and 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.

When Raymond was born, his parents, like most of the city’s black population, lived in the Seventh Ward (what is now the western part of Center City). Their home was located in the "fair to comfortable" section of the ward on a predominantly white block. His father and uncle were "riding masters" who gave horseback riding lessons to wealthy white people in Philadelphia. But by 1915, the emergence of the automobile era led the business to decline and ultimately fail.

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 (including his sister Virginia) 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 with even more mouths to feed, Alexander continued working through grade school and high school to help support himself and his siblings, holding 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. Later, looking back on his time at the Met, Alexander said that it had "opened a new world for [him]," and he credited that swanky 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. 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. While there, Alexander supported himself 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 and worked 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 barred, Alexander hired an attorney 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 would become the first black woman to earn a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania. They would have 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. Soon 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 at which she was found not guilty, a first 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. Though 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 efforts to desegregate the schools in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. After Easttown Township built a new elementary school, neighboring Tredyffrin Township closed their school and paid to send their students to Easttown (the Berwyn region included parts of both townships). Easttown converted their older, smaller 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 NAACP, Alexander negotiated with school board to end the boycott, but the stalemate dragged on 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, now promised to find a solution. Alexander and others credited Schnader's conversion 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, state representative Hobson R. Reynolds, a black Republican from Philadelphia, successfully proposed a strengthened equal rights bill in the state legislature to prevent similar situations from occurring again.

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 National Bar Association 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, represented three of the men during their appeal; the NAACP, at the request of their chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall, hired Alexander to represent two of the others. In 1949, the New Jersey Supreme Court 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 proved 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 proved his skill as a lawyer and saved the lives of his clients, while managing to distance himself from the CLC and other communist groups, an important consideration in the Cold War atmosphere.

Political and judicial career

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.