Raymond Pace Alexander was born in Philadelphia to former enslaved people but graduated with honors from Harvard Law School and became the go-to civil rights lawyer in Philadelphia.  In 1959, he became the first black judge to sit on the Court of Common Pleas. 

His wife Sadie Tanner Mossell came from a pioneering middle-class family and was the first Black women to earn an economics degree in the US, but then also became a lawyer. 

Together they spent their lives battling racism in Philadelphia.