Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander (January 2, 1898 – November 1, 1989), was a pioneering Black professional and civil rights activist of the early-to-mid-20th century. In 1921, Mossell Alexander was the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. in economics in the United States. In 1927, she was first woman to receive a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and went on to become the first Black woman to practice law in the state. She was also the first national president of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, serving from 1919 to 1923. Mossell Alexander and her husband were active in civil rights, both in Philadelphia and nationally. In 1946 she was appointed to the President's Committee on Civil Rights established by Harry Truman. In 1952 she was appointed to the city's Commission on Human Relations, serving through 1968. She was a founding member of the national Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (1963). She served on the board of the National Urban League for 25 years. U.S. President Jimmy Carter named her in 1979 to chair the decennial White House Conference on Aging, an appointment later withdrawn by Richard Schweiker, President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Health and Human Services. Biography Sadie Tanner Mossell was born on January 2, 1898, in Philadelphia to Aaron Albert Mossell II and Mary Louisa Tanner (born 1867). Mossell attended high school in Washington, D.C. at the M Street School, now known as Dunbar High School, graduating in 1915. Mossell returned to Philadelphia to study at the School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1918. There, she faced numerous hardships, due to her race and gender, such as poor advising, false accusations of plagiarism, and other students stealing her intellectual property. She pursued graduate work in economics, also at Penn, earning her master's in 1919. Awarded the Francis Sergeant Pepper fellowship, she was able to continue her studies and in 1921 became the first African-American woman in the United States to earn a PhD from an American university. Finding it difficult to get professorship work in Philadelphia as an African-American even with her doctorate, Mossell decided to take an actuarial job with the black-owned North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company in Durham, North Carolina, and worked there for two years. In 1919, Sadie Tanner Mossell was elected the first national President of Delta Sigma Theta. Mossell Alexander also served as the legal