Mahala Ashley Dickerson

Mahala Ashley Dickerson
Born	October 12, 1912(1912-10-12) Montgomery, Alabama, USA
Died	February 19, 2007(2007-02-19) (aged 94) Wasilla, Alaska, USA

Mahala Ashley Dickerson (October 12, 1912 Montgomery, Alabama - February 19, 2007 Wasilla, Alaska) grew up in Alabama on a plantation owned by her father. She attended a private school, Miss White's School, where she began a lifelong friendship with Rosa Parks, who would become a hero of the civil rights movement.

Dickerson graduated from Fisk University in 1935, married Henry Dickerson and had triplets, Alfred, John and Chris (a well known professional bodybuilder). She later divorced, and when the boys were 6, she went to Howard University School of Law, becoming one of four women to graduate in her class of 1936. After working as an attorney in Alabama and Indiana, she moved to Alaska with her sons, where she homesteaded.^[1]

She was the first black female attorney in her home state of Alabama in 1948 and the second black woman admitted to the bar in Indiana in 1951. She was also Alaska's first black attorney, admitted to the bar in 1959 and the first black president of the National Association of Women Lawyers, 1983-1984.^[2]

According to her Alaska Bar Association profile, Dickerson prosecuted "one of the first equal pay cases on behalf of women university professors who received less pay than their male counterparts."^[3] In 1995, she was awarded the Margaret Brent Award from the American Bar Association, an honor also given to U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O'Connor.

Dickerson practiced law into her nineties and was considered an advocate for the poor and underprivileged. She told the Anchorage Daily News, "In my life, I didn't have but two things to do. Those were to stay black and to die. I'm just not afraid to fight somebody big...Whenever there's somebody being mistreated, if they want me, I'll help them."^[4]

List of books

• Delayed Justice for Sale

Notes

1. ^ Julia O'Malley - McClatchy Newspapers, February 21, 2007
2. ^ Mahala Ashley Dickerson: Delayed Justice for Sale
3. ^ Alaska Bar Association: Profile of M. Ashley Dickeson
4. ^ Anchorage Daily News: Profile of M. Ashley Dickeson

References & Sources

• Mahala Ashley Dickerson: Delayed Justice for Sale - 1998
• Alaska Bar Association: Profile of M. Ashley Dickerson
• Chris Dickerson: one of her surviving sons and famous American Bodybuilder
• Anchorage Daily News: Profile of M. Ashley Dickerson - 1984
• Julia O'Malley - McClatchy Newspapers, February 21, 2007

External links

• M. Ashley Dickerson's Law Office Web Page

Persondata
Name	Dickerson, Mahala Ashley
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	October 12, 1912
Place of birth	Montgomery, Alabama, USA
Date of death	February 19, 2007
Place of death	Wasilla, Alaska, USA