Joyce London Alexander

Joyce London Alexander
Joyce London Alexander
Chief Magistrate Judge of the United States District Court
	Incumbent
	Assumed office; January 2, 1996
Profession	Magistrate judge

Last updated January 08, 2025

Howard University
New England School of Law (JD)
New York University (additional classes)

Joyce London Alexander (born 1949) is a former US district court magistrate judge. She was the first African-American to be appointed chief magistrate judge in the United States.^[1]^[2]^[3]

Life

In 1949, Alexander was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her parents were Edna and Oscar London. She attended Cambridge High and Latin School, where she was continually elected a class officer.^[3] While there, she became the first African-American president of the Student Council.^[3] She also participated on the track team. She went on to study at Howard University through a scholarship from the Boston NAACP. While in college, she worked as a legislative assistant to Tip O'Neill. She persuaded him to hire her as a legislative aide.^[1]^[3] Her work as a legislative assistant got her interested in work in justice. She graduated from Howard University in 1969. Afterward, she earned her J.D. from New England School of Law in 1972.^[1] She also received a grant from the NAACP to take additional classes at New York University on federal jurisdiction and labor law.^[3]

Career

Alexander began her legal career in 1972. She became a staff attorney working for the Greater Boston Legal Assistance Project as a Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer fellow.^[1]^[3] After her fellowship, she was legal counsel for many years with the Youth Activities Commission in Boston. She also worked as an assistant professor at Tufts University, teaching urban law and black politics.^[1]^[3] She served as the chair of President Jimmy Carter's Massachusetts delegation at the Democratic National Convention. She also co-founded the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts and was its first female president, along with being one of the youngest presidents of any Urban League. While there, she increased its budget tenfold.^[3] She became the first African-American woman nationwide, along with being the first woman in Massachusetts, to be an on-camera legal editor for a major network. Alexander was often called upon to appear on television and on interviews.^[3] In 1979, Alexander was appointed to the United States district court as a magistrate judge by President Jimmy Carter.^[1]^[2]^[3] She was the first African-American female judge to be appointed to that position, nationwide. She was also one of the youngest to ever be appointed to that position, nationwide.^[1]^[2]^[3] On January 2, 1996, she was made Chief Judge.^[1] She became the first African-American chief magistrate judge working on the federal bench. She also simultaneously became the first African-American chief judge of any court in Massachusetts.^[1]^[3]

Community work

Alexander co-founded and served as president of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts.^[1] She also served as chairperson of the Massachusetts Black Judges Conference, wherein she developed a scholarship program for minority students of law. She served as chairperson of the Judicial Council of the National Bar Association from 1987 to 1988. She participates in the "Kids, Courts and Citizenship" program in Boston, which she founded and maintains.^[3] In the program, more than 5,000 fifth-grade students of Boston public schools have visited her courtroom, spoken with her, and held a mock trial in her courtroom.^[1]^[3]

Awards

Alexander has received honorary law degrees from Northeastern University School of Law, Bridgewater State College, Suffolk University, and North Carolina State University.^[1] In 1980, Alexander was honored as one of the ten Outstanding Young Women in the United States. Additionally, the Boston Jaycees honored her as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Leaders of Massachusetts. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference gave her the Martin Luther King, Jr. Drum Major for Justice Award in 1985. In 1986, she received the Equal Justice Award from the National Bar Association. In 1992, the Cambridge Community Center gave her a Cambridge Community Service Award. In 1994, the National Bar Association's Judicial Council awarded her the William Hastie Award. In 1997, she received the C. Francis Stadford Award from the National Bar Association, which is their highest honor. Also in 1997, the Harvard University Foundation for Excellence in Multicultural and Racial Relations bestowed her with the Medal of Honor.

Related Research Articles

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. is an American civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City.

Constance Baker Motley was an American jurist and politician who served as a Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The Boston University School of Law is the law school of Boston University, a private research university in Boston. Established in 1872, it is the third-oldest law school in New England, after Harvard Law School and Yale Law School. Approximately 630 students are enrolled in the full-time J.D. degree program and about 350 in the school's five LLM degree programs. BU Law was one of the first law schools in the country to admit students to study law regardless of race or gender.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret H. Marshall</span> American judge (born 1944)

Margaret Hilary Marshall is an American jurist who served as the 24th chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the first woman to hold the position. She was chief justice from 1999 to 2010. On July 21, 2010, she announced her retirement. She was Senior Fellow of the Yale Corporation until she retired from the board in 2016, Senior Counsel at Choate Hall & Stewart, and a member of the Council of the American Law Institute. Marshall was elected in 2017 to the American Philosophical Society.

Suffolk University Law School is the private, non-sectarian law school of Suffolk University located in downtown Boston, across the street from the Boston Common and the Freedom Trail, two blocks from the Massachusetts State House, and a short walk to the financial district. Suffolk Law was founded in 1906 by Gleason Archer Sr. to provide a legal education for those who traditionally lacked the opportunity to study law because of socio-economic or racial discrimination.

Fred David Gray is an American civil rights attorney, preacher, activist, and state legislator from Alabama. He handled many prominent civil rights cases, such as Browder v. Gayle, and was elected to the Alabama House of Representatives in 1970, along with Thomas Reed, both from Tuskegee. They were the first black state legislators in Alabama in the 20th century. He served as the president of the National Bar Association in 1985, and in 2001 was elected as the first African-American President of the Alabama State Bar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nathaniel R. Jones</span> American judge (1926–2020)

Nathaniel Raphael Jones was an American attorney, judge, and law professor. As general counsel of the NAACP, Jones fought to end school segregation, including in the northern United States. From 1979 until 1995, he served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit before assuming senior status, and in 2002 retired to resume a private legal practice.

Sandra Lea Lynch is an American lawyer who serves as a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. She is the first woman to serve on that court. Lynch served as chief judge of the First Circuit from 2008 to 2015.

Melissa A. Hoffer is an American environmental lawyer currently serving as the Climate Chief of Massachusetts, the first to hold a seat of this kind in the country. Hoffer previously worked in the Attorney General of Massachusetts' office, the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), and WilmerHale. She was a "day one" appointee to President Joe Biden's cabinet as Principal Deputy General Counsel and Acting General Counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency. As a lawyer, she headed cases including Boumediene v. Bush and Commonwealth v. Exxon Mobil Corp. She believes in a "whole-of-government approach" to climate change and that environmental issues should not be isolated to a single government department.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mahala Ashley Dickerson</span> American lawyer and civil rights advocate

Mahala Ashley Dickerson 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Teresita de Castro</span> Filipino judge (born 1948)

Teresita Leonardo de Castro is a Filipina who served as the 24th chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines; she was appointed by President Rodrigo Duterte on August 28, 2018. She assumed the vacated position once her predecessor, Maria Lourdes Sereno, was removed via a quo warranto petition ; making De Castro the de jure 24th chief justice, and the first female chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Juanita Elizabeth Jackson Mitchell was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and was the first African-American woman to practice law in Maryland. She was married to Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr., mother of two Maryland State Senators, and grandmother of one.

Howard University School of Law is the law school of Howard University, a private, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is one of the oldest law schools in the country and the oldest historically black law school in the United States.

Joyce Adeline Bamford-Addo, is a Ghanaian barrister and judge who served as the first female Speaker of the Parliament of Ghana from 2009 to 2013. She was the first woman to be elected to that position in the West African sub-region. Bamford-Addo also was the first female Justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana. She served in that role from 1991 till 2004 when she retired.

Dovey Mae Johnson Roundtree was an African-American civil rights activist, ordained minister, and attorney. Her 1955 victory before the Interstate Commerce Commission in the first bus desegregation case to be brought before the ICC resulted in the only explicit repudiation of the "separate but equal" doctrine in the field of interstate bus transportation by a court or federal administrative body. That case, Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, which Dovey Roundtree brought before the ICC with her law partner and mentor Julius Winfield Robertson, was invoked by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy during the 1961 Freedom Riders' campaign in his successful battle to compel the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce its rulings and end Jim Crow laws in public transportation.

Women in law describes the role played by women in the legal profession and related occupations, which includes lawyers, paralegals, prosecutors, judges, legal scholars, law professors and law school deans.

Anna Elizabeth Blackburne-Rigsby is the chief judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, the highest appellate court for the District of Columbia. She works very closely with her husband Robert Rigsby and has great influence from her mother, Laura D. Blackburne.

Joyce Kavuma, is a Ugandan lawyer and judge on the High Court of Uganda. She was appointed to that court by president Yoweri Museveni, on 8 February 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glendora Putnam</span>

Glendora McIlwain Putnam was a civil rights activist and the first African American female to serve as the Assistant Attorney General of Massachusetts.

References

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 "Alexander, Joyce London". Encyclopedia.com. Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved April 9, 2017.
1 2 3 "African-Americans in Boston : more than 350 years". Archive.org. 1991. Retrieved April 9, 2017.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Reed, Pierce (2003). "Lady Justice: U.S. Magistrate Judge Joyce London Alexander Dedication". New England Law Review. 38: 901–922.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[EP-1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 "Alexander, Joyce London". Encyclopedia.com. Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved April 9, 2017.

[AR-2] 1 2 3 "African-Americans in Boston : more than 350 years". Archive.org. 1991. Retrieved April 9, 2017.

[LJ-3] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Reed, Pierce (2003). "Lady Justice: U.S. Magistrate Judge Joyce London Alexander Dedication". New England Law Review. 38: 901–922.

[1]

[2]

[3]