As she told the Anchorage Daily News, "In my life, I didn't have but two things to do. Those were to stay black and to die. I'm just not afraid to fight somebody big.... Whenever there's somebody being mistreated, if they want me, I'll help them." Dickerson continued to practice law in Alaska until she was in her early nineties, only a few years before her death in 2007. Death and legacy Dickerson died in Wasilla, Alaska, on February 19, 2007, at the age of ninety-four. Dickerson is buried in a cemetery she established on her Alaska property. Dickerson became the first black female attorney admitted to the bar in Alabama (in 1948); the second black woman admitted to the bar in Indiana (in 1951); and Alaska's first black attorney (in 1959). She was also the first black elected as president of the National Association of Women Lawyers (in 1983). With more than fifty-years of legal experience, she also helped to pave the way for other women attorneys. According to her American Bar Association profile, Dickerson prosecuted "one of the first equal pay cases on behalf of women university professors who received less pay than their male counterparts." In 1995, the American Bar Association named Dickerson a Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement honoree, an honor also given to U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg (a 1983 honoree) and Sandra Day O'Connor (an honoree in 2000), among other notable women lawyers, judges, law professors, and government leaders. Dickerson's papers are housed at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Honors and tributes The University of Alaska awarded her an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1994. The American Bar Association named her a Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement honoree in 1995. Selected published works Delayed Justice for Sale (1998), a memoir "Jet-Propelled into the Law: Mahala Ashley Dickerson" (1998), profile in Rebels in Law: Voices in History of Black Women Lawyers (1998) See also List of first women lawyers and judges in Alaska References Sources External links M. Ashley Dickerson's Law Office Web Page 1912 births 2007 deaths Activists from Alaska African-American people in Alaska politics African-American women lawyers African-American lawyers Alabama lawyers Alaska lawyers Lawyers from Montgomery, Alabama Lawyers from Anchorage, Alaska People from Wasilla, Alaska Indiana lawyers Howard University School of Law alumni 20th-century American women lawyers