Raymond Pace Alexander

Raymond Pace Alexander
Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia
Personal details
Born	October 13, 1898 Philadelphia
Died	1978

Raymond Pace Alexander (October 13, 1898 – November 24, 1974) was a civil rights leader, Harvard-educated lawyer and the first African-American judge appointed to the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Many accounts of the black civil rights struggle in the United States focus on the large-scale events, urban rebellions and nationwide efforts that characterized the years after the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. But, in reality, some of the most notable and influential civil rights figures were local attorneys across the country who fought racial discrimination and broke down barriers in the courtrooms and in society during the first half of the 20th century, laying the groundwork for Brown and the more well-known movement that followed. Raymond Pace Alexander is one such figure who has too often been overlooked. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Alexander opened his own firm in his hometown of Philadelphia, where he not only became one of the most prominent attorneys, but also stood at the forefront of the city’s civil rights struggle.

Alexander was born into a working-class black family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on October 13, 1898. Raymond’s 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, Virginia, and had 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 city was in a period of transition at the time, and growth in population and infrastructure meant relatively greater economic opportunities for black citizens than existed in the rural South. When Raymond was born, his parents, like most of the city’s black population, lived in the Seventh Ward – though their home was located in the "fair to comfortable" section of the Ward on a predominantly white block. His father and uncle were entrepreneurs; they were "riding masters" who gave horseback riding lessons to some of the wealthiest whites in Philadelphia for about twenty years. But by 1915, the Seventh Ward’s black population had grown to such an extent that wealthy whites in Philadelphia were less and less interested in patronizing black businesses, and those in the black community who depended on white clientele – including Hillard Alexander and his brother – failed.

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