Mahala Ashley Dickerson

Mahala Ashley Dickerson (October 12, 1912 – February 19, 2007) was an American lawyer and civil rights advocate for women and minorities. In 1948 she became the first African American female attorney admitted to the Alabama State Bar; in 1951 she was the second African American woman admitted to the Indiana bar; and in 1959 she was Alaska's first African American attorney. In 1983 Dickerson was the first African American to be elected president of the National Association of Women Lawyers. Her long legal career also helped to pave the way for other women attorneys. In 1995 the American Bar Association named her a Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement honoree.

Early life and education Mahala Ashley was born in rural Montgomery County, Alabama, on October 12, 1912, to Hattie (Moss) and John Augustine Ashley. Her father was the owner of a general store. Her siblings included two sisters, Erna and Harriette.

Ashley attended Montgomery Industrial School for Girls (Miss White's School), a private school in Montgomery, where she met Rosa Parks, her lifelong friend who would become an activist in the civil rights movement. In 1935, Ashley graduated cum laude with a degree in sociology from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Following her divorce from her first husband, Henry Dickerson, in 1939, Mahala Ashley enrolled at the Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. She graduated cum laude and was one of four women to graduate in her class of 1948.

In 1951 Mahala Dickerson married Frank R. Beckwith, an Indianapolis attorney, and relocated with her three sons to Indianapolis, Indiana. In 1958, after her marriage to Beckwith ended in divorce, Dickerson moved to Alaska. The couple had no children together. He also ran in Indiana's Republican presidential primary in 1964.

Career Legal career After graduating from law school, Dickerson returned to Alabama to practice law. In 1948 she became the first African-American woman to be admitted to the Alabama State Bar. Dickerson established offices in Montgomery and Tuskegee, Alabama, where she practiced law for the next three years.

In 1951, following her marriage to Frank Beckwith, Dickerson moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, and became the second black woman to be admitted to the Indiana bar. making her Alaska's first female black homesteader. When she passed the Alaska bar exam, she became the first African American attorney and one of only a few women practicing law in the state. She also served as chairman of the board of directors of the Marion County [Indiana] Colored Women's Republican Club.

Later years Dickerson remained active in her later years. In addition to serving as president of Dickerson and Gibbons, the law firm she established in Alaska, she founded Al-Acres, a charitable non-profit organization. Dickerson continued to practice law in Alaska until she was in her early nineties, only a few years before her death in 2007. Dickerson is buried in a cemetery she established on her Alaska property. Dickerson's papers are housed at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Honors and tributes Honored by the NAACP in 1982 She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 2023 The National Association of Women Lawyers awards the M. Ashley Dickerson Diversity Award annually. Past honorees include Sherrilyn Ifill (2020), Wilhelmina Wright (2017), JoAnne A. Epps (2015), Debra L. Lee (2010), and Deborah Batts (2008) She received her Phi Beta Kappa key 51 years after graduating, as it was not allowed at black colleges when she graduated.

Selected published works Delayed Justice for Sale (1998), a memoir "Jet-Propelled into the Law: Mahala Ashley Dickerson" (1998), profile in Rebels in Law: Voices in History of Black Women Lawyers (1998)