New statue to honor a trailblazing civil rights leader outside Philadelphia’s Municipal Services Building

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A new statue in Philadelphia will honor a Philly native who was a civil rights trailblazer.

Sadie Alexander was the first African American regardless of gender to earn a Ph.D. in economics when she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1921. In 1924, she entered Penn’s law school and was the first Black woman to graduate. By 1927, she became the first Black woman admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar.

She eventually became an attorney, fighting for those who needed her help, said her daughter Rae Alexander-Minter.

“I have seen Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander not only as a fighter, but as a woman with great dignity and humanity for others who had been segregated because of race, our gender, economic deficiencies, lack of proper education,” Alexander-Minter said.

Alexander-Minter said Alexander used her skills to fight for civil rights for Black Americans and served on President Harry Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights.

The statue honoring Alexander will be placed near where a monument to former Mayor Frank Rizzo once stood. The city removed the Rizzo statue in 2020, just days after protesters tried to take it down themselves. Then-Mayor Jim Kenney said at the time that the Rizzo statue had become a rallying point for racial tensions and violence.

Mayor Cherelle Parker said she had been planning a statue for the trailblazing woman when she was in City Council back in 2018.

“Dr. Alexander stepped boldly through doors that for decades have been closed to others, and that’s legacy,” Parker said. She added that the location of a monument to her life’s work was appropriate.

“With Dr. Alexander’s extraordinary life rooted in service and justice, I can’t think of any location more fitting for Dr. Alexander’s statue than in front of the building that Philadelphians go to to address many of the quality-of-life issues that we traditionally need services and assistance for in our daily lives,” Parker said.

Artist Vinnie Bagwell has been commissioned to create the bronze.

“I want young girls, especially Black girls, to stand before her likeness and see a mirror. I want them to know you belong, you matter, and you too can lead,” Bagwell said.

The commission will take about two years to complete.

A bronze sculpture honoring Harriet Tubman is expected to be unveiled at City Hall, across the street from the Municipal Services Building, next year.

It was commissioned after a traveling Tubman monument was well received in the city back in 2022 and crowded by tourists and other onlookers during its stay in Philadelphia. Artist Alvin Pettit’s concept depicts Tubman preparing to face her foes, armed with a long gun across her back and a sword and pistol in her belt. Concept art for the Tubman statue shows her standing on a mound of chains and shackles with her hands clenched in prayer.