Tough Cookies

20/08/2025

An August birthday girl you should know about is anthropologist Ruth Underhill. Born in New York in 1883, Underhill was a 1905 graduate of Vassar, graduating with a Phi Beta Kappa key in hand. After that success, she traveled to England and enrolled in the London School of Economics, graduating with a Master’s Degree in 1907. WWI brought her to Italy, where she worked at a Red Cross orphanage and became interested in humanity and human behavior.

While working on the Committee for Crippled and Disabled people, Underhill was asked to take on the responsibility of establishing orphanages throughout Italy. Following the war, she worked for the Rockefeller Foundation investigating child labor in that country. To improve the human condition was her mission.
When she returned to the states, Columbia University’s Anthropology Department and the illustrious Franz Boas welcomed her into their department as a PhD candidate.

Ever a seeker of knowledge, Underhill said she was always searching “for something to do to help humanity.” She earned that degree in 1937 with a dissertation entitled “Social Organization of the Papago Indians.”

As part of her doctoral research in Arizona, Underhill befriended pretty much the whole Tohono O’odham Nation, who allowed her to live with them in their community, where she studied the life of the women there. She later wrote a book titled “Autobiography of a Papago Woman,” about an elderly member of the tribe, Maria Chona.

Underhill’s studies of the Tohono O’odham tribe of Arizona, established her reputation as a respected anthropologist. Traveling through the American southwest as Assistant Supervisor of Indian Education from 1934 to ’42, she cooperated with reservation teachers in the development of a curriculum for Indian Schools that featured a study of Native American culture—first of its kind.

She went on to write many books on Native Americans, one of which, “Red Man,” was the subject of a series of 30 documentary films in 1956. Each film depicted the life and culture of the native peoples living in various regions of the west.

Although she retired in 1948, she accepted a 4-year position as Professor of Anthropology at the University of Denver, after which she traveled the world, writing and teaching, living among communities in such countries as India and Israel.

Her honors and awards are many and include several from Native American reservations and grateful universities as well as from the American Anthropological Association. Her published works number at around 30. In 1983, Governor of Colorado Richard Lamm declared August 22nd Ruth Underhill Day. It was her 100th birthday. She passed away the following year, a week before reaching 101. Thank you, Dr. Underhill, for your service. You are a tough cookie if we ever saw one.

Cookie Today: Native American Corn Cookie from thefinercookie. Picture from Wikipedia.

24/07/2025

Icie Gertrude Macy Hoobler, born in July, 1892, was a scientist whose research greatly improved the health of mothers and children back when it was thought that women were too pretty and fragile to be scientists. At least, that’s what men told them.

Icie Hoobler was a farm girl from Gallatin, Missouri. Being around animals piqued her interest in biological science, but it was a visit to the Arkansas mountains where she saw children bent by sickness and hunger that inspired her to try to do something to alleviate suffering.

Hoobler attended Central Female College in Lexington, Missouri, where her interest in science was validated by a female biology teacher, who encouraged her to pursue her interest in science. She went on to enroll in the University of Chicago, graduating with a major in chemistry, after which she taught inorganic chemistry at the University of Colorado, Boulder, earning a master’s degree there in 1918. But she didn’t stop there. With a first publication under her belt, she entered Yale to pursue a Ph.D.

As you might expect, there weren’t too many female grad students at this prestigious institution, and those who were there had a hard time finding a place to live because, you know, landlords that that women are just so persnickety. A little group called the Graduate Women’s Club came together to help the females of Yale, and they persnicked enough that Yale finally offered accommodations on campus for female students. Way to go, ladies!

Hoobler availed herself of lectures at Yale frequently—who wouldn’t? And while attending one on human nutrition, she found herself drawn to a lecturer’s exploration of human nutrition and a study of the health of mothers, infants, and children. She was riveted, and it became her raison d’etre.

After earning the Ph.D., Hoobler went to work at Western Pennsylvania Hospital in Pittsburgh. Yes, they hired her, but it soon became apparent that they didn’t really want a clunky girl in their chem. Lab. Because the hospital only had male bathrooms, yes, that’s what I said, she had to run to a public bathroom half a block away. So, naturally, she tried not to answer the call of nature as much as she should have. She eventually developed nephritis.

Moreover, she couldn’t even eat in the hospital dining hall because that hallowed food hall was reserved for MDs, who, of course, were all male. She couldn’t eat in the nurse’s dining hall, either, for, what Wikipedia says, were “bureaucratic reasons.” She ate with all the other employees, janitors, nurse’s aides, lunch crew. When she complained about having to eat at the kids’ table, they told her to get over it. She resigned.

Day after her resignation, when the President of the board of trustees of the hospital asked her why she didn’t come to the annual banquet for hospital administrators and high-end medical staff, she said she wasn’t invited. When questioned about that faux pas, the Lab chief said something like, oh my goodness, I didn’t invite her because I didn’t think she’d feel comfortable surrounded by “all those men.” Well, you know how some men chew their food. He might have had a point, there.

Here's a better story: When she was invited to the Chicago Club to give a talk about her valuable research, rumor has it the board didn’t realize that “Icie” was a girl’s name, and when they discovered their misunderstanding, they would not let her enter the room. It took the intercession of her husband, who convinced the board of trustees to re-vote on her “permission to speak,” overriding the no girls allowed dictum. I would have told them to do a Stephen Colbert. IYKYK.

In 1923, Hoobler began teaching a course on food chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. She was so well-respected that she was offered the directorship of the Nutrition Research Project of the Merril-Palmer school for Motherhood and Child Development, where she spent 36 years researching ways to expand mainstream knowledge about the health of young mothers, their metabolism, their reproductive cycle, and the chemistry of their red blood cells. Fruitful years, to be sure. After retirement, she remained on as a consultant.

The lab at Merril-Palmer under her supervision published 300 journal articles and several books about the reproductive cycle and the metabolism and its connection with red blood cells of young women—mostly due to the enthusiasm and dedication of Icie (her friends called her Macy) Hoobler.

Icie Hoobler was the first female chair of the local American Chemical Society in 1931. She received many awards during her career, including the Mendel Award from the American Institute of Nutrition and the Borden Award form the American Home Economics Association, among others. She was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame in 1984, the same year she passed away in her home state of Missouri, at the age of 91. Much to know about this scientist who broke the “biology” barrier. Look her up.

Cookie today: Missouri Cookies from Weelicious. Picture from Daviess country Historical Society by permission.

06/06/2025

Who is Estelle Naomi Trebert Griswold, born in Connecticut, June 8, 1900? Well, she was instrumental in setting the legal precedent that contraception for married couples constituted a right to privacy, which in turn helped to propel the women’s reproductive rights movement into the American zeitgeist, leading to such cases involving women’s bodies as the well-known Roe v. Wade case. Shall I go on?

Griswold was not necessarily what one might call a “girly girl” as a child. A bit of a free spirit, she was forced to graduate high school a year after her cohorts because she skipped school a little too often. However, she was able to enroll into the Hartt Music school and went on to become a successful singer, much to her parents’ chagrin, traveling in France and then later touring with a Chicago-based traveling show group. By 1929, she claimed a little fame as a popular New York radio singer.

Eventually, Griswold found herself back in Europe following WWII, not singing, but resettling refugees affected by the war and witnessing such desperate poverty and heartbreaking food insecurity that she set her sights on solving the problem of overpopulation, something she believed exacerbated the above stated conditions. Women needed to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies, she decided, and perhaps keep them from suffering abuse from husbands who were oblivious to their wives’ needs.

She and her husband did not have children.

In 1950, she returned home and settled in New Haven, CN, and by 1954, she was serving as executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut. She organized what was called “border runs” wherein women were shuttled to NY or RI to be advised concerning proper birth control methods. Her aim as director was to actually change the P.T. Barnum-sponsored 1879 edict banning the sale and/or manufacture of contraception products, which was still in force. She went right to work on her goal to address overpopulation.

In a court case labeled Poe v. Ullman, Poe being the alias of a couple whose loss of three babies due to genetic causes, led them to try to persuade the court to allow them to use birth control. As director of Planned Parenthood, Griswold got involved. Her lawyers presented the argument that the couple had the right to privacy concerning their marital relations. The couple needed contraception to save the wife from physical danger due to another pregnancy and from the potential deterioration of the mental health of both. However, the state denied to simply change the law for the sake of the privacy plea because the couple was not prosecuted for this offense. No harm, no foul.

Interestingly, when the case rose to SCOTUS, the justices, in a 5-4 decision, ruled with the lower court, claiming that since the law had never been enforced, the consequence of violating it wasn’t harmful, nobody was fined or jailed or anything, so the statute remained in place. It was Constitutional.

Griswold was outraged. What, go ahead and violate this so-called law? Then why have it on the books at all? Just don’t tell anybody? Are all laws instituted that way? Like the blue laws that are still on the books in some states but nobody pays attention to them.

Griswold decided to test the law’s enforceability.

In 1961, she opened a clinic with gynecologist Dr. C. Lee Buxton from the Yale School of Medicine, which she staffed with doctors willing to advise women of their reproductive options. Protestors showed up. Detectives descended on the building to see what was going on. They interviewed two patients at the clinic who had been counseled about birth control, and Griswold and Buxton were consequently charged with illegally proffering information about contraception and were fined $100 each. The clinic was shut down. This is exactly what Griswold wanted to happened. Four years later, their court case was considered by the US Supreme Court and was called Griswold v. Connecticut.

Griswold’s lawyers argued that the anti-contraception law violated the couple’s marital privacy, making it unconstitutional. Changing the argument and focusing on the right to privacy was a game changer this time. The Poe v. Ullman decision was ultimately considered null and void, and the court voted 7-2 declaring that, yes, the law was indeed unconstitutional—giving all married couples the right to use birth control.

In 1972, SCOTUS extended the right to privacy to individuals, unmarried women, and in 1973, in the case of Roe v. Wade, the court gave all women the right to opt for an abortion.

This decision, as we know, set off an almost 50-year-long counter-argument that reversed the court’s 1972 decision in 2022, and spawned additional much disputed issues regarding women’s rights to make decisions about their body and doctors’ legal efforts to provide reproductive healthcare to female patients--among others.

What would Estelle Trebert Griswold say today? Good question. As Walter Cronkite used to say, “And that’s the way it is.”

Cookie today: Snickerdoodle from TasteAtlas. Picture from Wikipedia

24/05/2025

Another document in the Freedom Shrine is an article published in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle April 23, 1874, concerning the trial of Susan B. Anthony on the charge of illegal voting in the 1872 Presidential election. I’m sure you have heard of this lady, even if it’s only the fact that her face showed up on a silver dollar, first minted in 1979.

Susan B. Anthony was a leader in the women’s suffrage movement. She was arrested for voting in Rochester, New York, where state laws allowed only men to vote. Anthony claimed that, according to the 14th amendment adopted in 1868, “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”

The Supreme Court appointed federal judge Ward Hunt directed the all-male jury to levy a verdict of guilty, without any jury discussion. By the way, women were not allowed to serve on a jury in New York, until 1937. Following the verdict, when Hunt asked Anthony if she had anything to say, having been denied her voice during the trial, he was immediately sorry he did so. Boy, did she have something to say.

She decried the injustice of disallowing women to enjoy the same right to vote as men had, and rebuked the “high-handed outrage upon [her] citizen’s rights.” As she went on in her protest of current law and her advocation of allowing women to vote, he tried to get her to shut up. Nevertheless, she persisted.

Hunt sentenced her to pay a fine of $100, which she refused to pay. But Hunt was tricky. He declared that he would not throw Anthony in the pokey for not paying the fine because he knew that permitting her to forego jail time would prevent her from taking the case to the Supreme Court. Sneaky. Not sure that going to SCOTUS would have helped her during the 19th-century, but still.

There were 14 other female voters who dared to vote in that election, and they, too, were arrested and jailed. Yet, they were never tried in court. In May, 1873, the 14 scofflaws were released without further action against them. The election inspectors who let these women register to vote, however, were arrested, as well. They were tried, found guilty of violating the Enforcement Act of 1870, and fined. When they, too, refused to pay their fine, they were indeed thrown in jail. President Ulysses S. Grant later pardoned them in March, 1874.

Susan B. Anthony published a book about the trial proceedings in April, 1874, that included almost all the official documents, such as transcripts, attorneys’ arguments, and her speech. Historians say that the trial, which got much media coverage, helped put women’s suffrage on the national map. Additionally, Judge Hunt’s directed verdict became a stain on the workings of judicial representatives for years, leading to a Supreme Court ruling in 1895, that a federal judge could not direct a jury to issue a guilty verdict in a criminal trial.

Susan B. Anthony was a Tough Cookie. The account of her trial is a worthy entry into the archives of the Freedom Shrine, recognized annually in May.

Cookie today: “Rochester Cookies” submitted by Floofies on Food website. Picture from Wikipedia.

29/04/2025

Born April 29, 1880, Lillian Bertha Amstead Jones Horace is a woman about who you should know. She describes herself as a “mystical” child who had big dreams, even as she was attending the East Ninth Street Colored School, the first free public school in Fort Worth, Texas. Big dreams, however, were not often on the bingo card of African American women at the turn of the century.

Horace’s goal was, in her own words, “to read—to unite—to teach—to possess no fear of death.” She chose using higher education to achieve her ambition, attending, in chronological order, Bishop College, Prairie View A & M, University of Chicago, and Columbia. She eventually taught at her old high school, I. M. Terrell in Fort Worth, the first Black school in the area, where she established the school’s first library, the drama department, and the school newspaper, and along the way juggled administrative positions in the field of education.

She was also a novelist, but it took a professor at Texas Southern, Karen Kossie-Chernyshev, to discover Horace’s novels and her diary ensconced in the Fort Worth Public Library, lost among the archives. Her first novel, “Five Generations Hence” (1916), self-published, was a kind of science fiction about the escape of Black Americans to Africa—an idea that Marcus Garvey later ran with. Kossie-Chernyshev writes, Horace wanted to write a book “worth reading by an intelligent person, not necessarily [her] friend.” She ended up with three books under her belt. Horace’s diary entries abound with her opinions about politics, discrimination, white supremacy, as well as a few narratives about her personal life.

For instance, when a white woman actually stole the shoes she just bought at a shoe shop, she complained about it to the floorwalker, who would not help her retrieve her purchase, even though he knew what happened. She wants to tell him off, but she doesn’t. She merely accepts the slight as inevitable, writing: “Just a dark face makes you the recipient of any insult.”

Horace admired writers Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright—though, as Angela Boswell writes, she thought Wright was a little too negative in his portrayal of African Americans. Horace’s own black female characters challenged the white-proliferated stereotype of black women as promiscuous and potty-mouthed, pointed out by researcher/writers Giulia Fabi and Nikki Brown. Her women characters were intelligent, strong, and resistant to the authority of the white culture. Horace’s subject matter was not really acceptable to religious and publishing institutions, which is why she self-published.

Nevertheless, she persisted in her writing. It’s thanks to 21st-century excavators of African American female participation in the literary world that we have been introduced to Horace and to other little-known writers who also effectuated their big dreams, one way or another, regardless of the road blocks in their way.

Besides writing and teaching, Horace was active in community uplift. She worked on the Texas Commission on In*******al Cooperation, she was Chaplain of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, a member of the Texas Library Association, and served with the Heroines of Jericho, among other organizations.

There is much to learn about Lillian B. Horace—too much for this space. She passed away at age 85. Avail yourself of the opportunity to meet this Tough Cookie.

Cookie today: Brown Butter Walnut Chocolate Chunk cookies from The Hungry Hutch, member of Black Bloggers on the Dash of Jazz website. Picture from Wikipedia.

31/03/2025

As we wind up Women’s History month, I’d like to introduce you to one of the ladies of my dissertation. Wait!! Come Back!! She’s interesting. Sara Willis Parton, AKA F***y Fern, was THE highest paid newspaper columnist in 1855. Sometimes lumped into the group of “scribbling women” who wrote domestic fiction, F***y Fern wrote a couple of sentimental novels and columns, yes, but she also had the guts to confront topics that “true” women weren’t supposed to discuss, let alone tackle, like prostitution, work house issues, prison conditions, domestic abuse, financial independence for women.

Even though Sara came from a prominent writing family, she considered herself simply a wife and mother of three girls—at first, that is. Then her husband died and she found herself financially bereft with no help from her family—who urged her to just marry again—which she did, disastrously. In fact, she escaped from that second husband, and he ended up divorcing her for desertion. SCANDAL!! Usually it was the other way around.

After taking in laundry for a while, she decided to use her inherent talents to work as a free-lance writer for several newspapers, taking a flowery nom de plume, as did many female writers of the time. She was hilarious—so funny that people thought F***y had to be a man. Women weren’t smart enough to be funny. Don’t be ridiculous!

But when some of her conservative fans found out she was actually female, AND a snarky, intelligent blue stocking (as writing women were called then), they called her an Amazon, a sexless monster, an embarrassment to women everywhere. The embodiment of trouble in River City, if you will.

However, F***y did very well for herself in spite of slings and arrows flung at her, writing steadily for the New York Ledger for most of her writing life. She had a dance, a song, a railroad car, and a dip of to***co named after her. Nathaniel Hawthorne loved her—because, he said, she wrote “as if the devil was in her.”

When she married a third time to fellow writer James Parton, she insisted on getting a pre-nup so that when the marriage ended, through divorce or death, only her children would benefit from her writerly earnings. If F***y Fern were alive today, she’d be Bea Arthur.

This is less than a thumbnail sketch of what there is to know about F***y Fern. She’s buried in Mt. Auburn cemetery in Cambridge, MA. If you visit, look for my library card tucked in front of her headstone.

“I hate the word proper. If you tell me a thing is not proper, I immediately feel the most rabid desire to go ‘neck and heels’ into it.”—F***y Fern. Atta girl! Picture from Wikipedia

07/03/2025

Frances Elizabeth Snyder Holberton—Betty, to her friends—was born in 1917 in Philadelphia, into a caring family who nurtured her self-confidence and gave their blessing to her ambition. A smart girl, she got into college and was on her way. She had just gotten settled in her math class at the University of Pennsylvania, when the professor marched up to her desk and said something along the lines of oh honey, you don’t want to worry your pretty little head about big intellectual subjects like math. No, sweetheart. Why don’t you just stay home and raise of few kids, as you should, as all women should. Go along now.

Of course, I wasn’t there and didn’t hear the guy say that, but I’m betting this wasn’t the first time he offered this kindly advice to a little lady sitting in his math class. Needless to say, she didn’t do that, and the tech world is enormously grateful.

As it turned out, Betty Holberton did not major in math. She decided to major in journalism in college because it was one of the only professions that welcomed women. It was a practical decision. However, when WWII broke, the US Army found that it needed people to figure out ballistics’ trajectories. Lots of women interviewed for these jobs, and, astoundingly, around 200 women were hired by the Moore School of Engineering to actually be human computers. Holberton was one of them.

Eventually, six of them, including Holberton, were chosen to be programmers of the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC), the world’s first electronic digital computer designed for general use. These women made up the only generation of programmers to engage in programming the ENIAC. And although the computer was officially unveiled in 1946, late for the war, it was still used in the ballistics industry, it was employed to calculate the design of the hydrogen bomb, and it was involved in the study of cosmic rays, among other varied uses.

Holberton, along with the other women working for the US Ballistic Research Lab, were considered “subprofessionals” (men were the professionals). Moreover, they were only allowed to wire programs and look at blueprints. But they were there, making history just the same. After the war, Holberton took a job at the National Bureau of Standards where she worked on the FORTRAN language: FORTRAN77 and FORTRAN90. For this work she won the Department of Commerce Silver Medal.

In 1959, at 42, Holberton became Chief of the Programming Research Branch, Applied Mathematics lab at the David Taylor Model basin, which was one of the largest ship model basin test facilities in the world. I know you’ve heard of UNIVAC. Holberton also worked on that line of digitally stored information—the first of its kind in the world.

In 1997, Betty Holberton was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame. She also copped the Augusta Ada Lovelace Award conferred upon her by the Association of Women in Computing and received the IEEE Computer Pioneer Award that same year. She was 80 years old.

When people wondered how she achieved so much success in a primarily male profession, she gave the following advice: “Look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man, and work like a dog.” Betty Holberton passed away in 2001 at 84. I’m not sure how that advice would go over with today’s women, but there it is. Thank you, Betty, for blazing a trail as one of the mostly unsung female ENIAC patriots who worked like a dog AND found time to raise two daughters.

Cookie today: Macadamia nut chocolate chip from allrecipes. Picture from Wikipedia.

01/02/2025

31/01/2025

Because I don’t want us to dismiss, ignore, or lose any of our history, I wanted to provide thumbnail sketches of two women who worked with the Tuskegee Airmen. They were smart, talented, competent, and above all, fearlessly determined.

Mildred Hemmons Carter was the first black female pilot in Alabama. After living for a bit in Mississippi, Carter’s family returned to her birthplace of Alabama, traveling to Tuskegee where she enrolled in Tuskegee University, majoring in business. She soon entered the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) and was a member of the first graduating class of CPTP trainees, receiving her pilot’s license in 1941. One month after gaining her certificate, she met Eleanor Roosevelt, who was visiting Tuskegee to show her support for the celebrated pilots. This meeting is refashioned in the historical fiction _The First Ladies_ by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray.

Carter met her husband, Herbert Carter, on Tuskegee campus. Because the Airmen were not allowed to date other students there during training, Herbert and his future wife would take planes out for “maintenance” and fly by each other and blow kisses.

Mildred Carter soon applied to the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots organization, but even though she had logged 100 hours of flying, she was rejected for racial reasons. During WWII, Carter worked at “the only primary flight facility for African American pilot candidates,” Moton Field. She was a woman of many talents, including working a bulldozer to clear airstrips. Needless to say, she was a mentor to young black women who aspired to be pilots, flight nurses, and aerospace engineers in the US Airforce.

Unfortunately, her life of flying ended when she broke her hip in 1985, at 64. However, much to everyone’s delight, in February, 2011, she was instated as an official member of the organization that once denied her admission, the Women Airforce Service Pilots, and was finally recognized as an “Original Tuskegee Airman.” A Red Tail. She passed away eight months later at 90 years of age.

Another Tuskegee woman we should know about is Irma Cameron Dryden, born in New York, a military nurse of Jamaican heritage, who served with pride during WWII. A New Yorker by birth, Dryden was shocked at the discrimination simmering in the US south. During her interview with Tuskegee University in 1942, she admitted that “she didn’t eat the whole trip” to Alabama, because black railway passengers could have a meal only after the white passengers had finished eating, and only while sitting behind a curtain.

In 1943, Dryden married a fellow Tuskegee student, an Airman, (it was the first military wedding at Tuskegee) and joined the all-black US Army Air Force pilots in AL where she nursed patients back to health at the Tuskegee Army Airfield station hospital. The story of Irma and her husband is featured in Tom Brokaw's book _An Album of Memories: Personal Histories from the Greatest Generation_. The following year Dryden left the military to oversee a medical lab in New Jersey. It was a position she held for 20 years.

In 2013, Dryden became the first honorary member of the Atlanta chapter of the National Black Nurses Association, who established a scholarship in her name. And, in 2014, she received the Congressional Gold Medal for her service to the country.

Irma Cameron Dryden passed away in September, 2020, the oldest living Tuskegee Air Corps nurse at the time. She was 100 years old.

Remember these are written thumbnail sketches. Research on these women, among others, will repay you handsomely.

Cookie today is New York’s touted Black and White cookie from food.com. Picture of Hemmons from Wikipedia. Picture of Dryden celebrating her 100th birthday from people.com

04/01/2025

Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, born in the beginning of 1898, was the 2nd African American woman to earn a Ph.D. and the first one to receive that degree in economics in the US. She was also the first Black woman to both cop a law degree from U Penn and to practice law in the state. A Civil Rights activist and political influencer, Alexander is someone we should know a little about. Read on.

Born in Philly and educated at Howard University and the University of Pennsylvania, Alexander did not find life to be just a bowl of cherries. She faced numerous difficulties attributed to an ongoing prejudice against her race, her gender, and oddly enough, her intelligence. Though she earned a doctorate, Alexander could not find a professorship in Philadelphia, so she trekked to North Carolina and took an actuarial job at a black-owned Insurance agency.

Upon entering law school at U Penn Law, Alexander found that student life there was same-old same-old. The Dean tried to thwart her application to Law Review, but her fellow students became her cheering section and insisted that she be allowed to participate. The students won. She practiced law from 1927 until her retirement in 1982. Among her duties were an appointment as Assistant City Solicitor for the city of Philadelphia, secretary of the National Bar Association, and an appointment to the Commission on Human Relations in that city.

Alexander’s philosophy about racial oppression focused on racial and economic justice for the working class. She wrote that a multi-racial labor program was key to overcoming many of the problems of the black working class. She did not, however, support direct political action and protest and thought that economic justice should come first, even though she frequently spoke out against white dominance in the political and social sphere. Alexander was critical of Roosevelt’s New Deal, claiming that it did not meet the economic and protective needs of black laborers.

She was appointed to President Truman’s Presidential Committee on Human Rights after WWII. In 1949, she and six other Philadelphians formed the Citizens Council on Democratic Rights, which later became a part of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Among other awards and honors Alexander received over her lifetime, The Sadie Collection, an organization for Black Women in the field of economics, was created in her honor. Its first conference, in 2019, drew such luminaries as Janet Yellen and was acknowledged by prominent media outlets such as Bloobberg and Forbes. On April 27, 2022, Alexander was named a distinguished fellow by the American Economic Association and is currently the first and only economist to receive this award posthumously.

Sadie Mossell Alexander passed away November, 1989, from pneumonia, a complication of that most ignominious villain of all: Alzheimer’s disease. She was 91.

Cookie today: Teacake recipe from The Soul Food Pot. Picture from Wikipedia.