March 6, 2026

President’s Message By Amy Coco

As we move from Black History Month into Women’s History Month, it is fitting to reflect on a figure whose life powerfully bridges both: Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander.

In 1927, Sadie Alexander became the first Black woman admitted to practice law in Pennsylvania. But even that remarkable milestone tells only part of her story.

Her academic achievements alone were extraordinary. She earned her Bachelor of Science (1918), Master of Science (1919), and Ph.D. in economics (1921) from the University of Pennsylvania, becoming the first Black woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in economics. She later returned to Penn to earn her law degree in 1927. At a time when both higher education and the legal profession were overwhelmingly closed to women and to people of color, Alexander did not merely gain entry – she excelled at the highest levels.

Like many women and Black men of her era, her path was not smooth. As a law student, she faced exclusion from social and professional opportunities. She was denied full participation in student organizations and had to fight for recognition of her academic accomplishments. She entered a profession that viewed courtroom advocacy as inherently masculine and leadership as male by default.

Women who enter professions historically dominated by men often find that competence alone is not enough. They must work harder, achieve more, and demonstrate excellence repeatedly simply to be viewed as equals. For women of color, those expectations are compounded. The standards are higher, the scrutiny sharper, and the margin for error smaller. Sadie Alexander lived at that intersection decades before we had a name for it.

Today, we call it intersectionality which is the understanding that race and gender do not operate independently, but together shape experience. Alexander navigated both racial exclusion and gender bias within a legal system that was not designed with her in mind.

And yet, she built a remarkable career.

She practiced law for decades in Philadelphia, served on President Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights, chaired the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, and became a national voice for civil rights and social justice. Although Black women lawyers were often excluded from elite corporate firms and steered into probate and domestic relations work, those spaces became sites of meaningful authority. Community-based and small-firm practices placed women like Alexander at the center of civic life, where they exercised client leadership, built trusted relationships, and shaped the legal infrastructure of their communities.

Her career demonstrates that perseverance, intellectual rigor, and quiet determination can expand the boundaries of a profession.

While Alexander advanced, women were just starting to enter the Allegheny County bar.  Between 1902 and 1942, among the hundreds of new lawyers admitted in Pittsburgh, just 65 white women and 13 African American men entered the profession. Many of those women did not remain in active practice. Some married shortly after admission. Others worked in-house, in government, or in positions largely hidden from public view. Very few were visible in courtrooms, firm leadership, or bar governance.

From that era in Pittsburgh, one woman of the bar would not remain hidden: Sara Soffel. Admitted to the Allegheny County bar in 1916, Soffel rose to become the first woman appointed as a judge in Pennsylvania. She did not ascend the bench by leading a reform movement or demanding public recognition. She stood there – steadily, competently, and visibly – at a time when women in judicial office were nearly unimaginable. In doing so, she quietly redefined who belonged in positions of authority within our courts.

Progress for women was neither linear nor assured. Even as political and ethnic barriers shifted during the early twentieth century, gender remained a plainly visible line that could not be assimilated away. For white women, entry into the profession was often tentative and conditional. For Black women like Sadie Alexander, the barriers were compounded.

Their stories remind us that access to the law has never been automatic. It has been secured by those willing to insist on belonging – and to redefine what belonging looks like.

As we move from Black History Month into Women’s History Month, we recognize that these histories are not separate chapters, but overlapping ones. The profession we inherit today was shaped by women who entered quietly, by women who endured invisibility, and by women who confronted exclusion directly.

The progress we celebrate rests on the resilience of those who persisted anyway.

Sadie Alexander refused to accept the professional limits others imagined for her. Sara Soffel stood on a bench where few expected her to stand. Together, their lives broadened what was possible – not only for women and lawyers of color, but for the entire bar.

May we continue that work.