On July 30, 2025, Mayor Cherelle Parker and Creative Philadelphia announced the winning artist selected to create a statue to be installed at Thomas Paine Plaza, at the Municipal Services Building, honoring trailblazing civil rights activist and economist Dr. Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania’s Cary Law School in 1927. Upon installation of this statue, it will become only the third public art installation honoring a historic African American woman, after Blanche Nixon and Harriet Nixon.
Selected by the Sadie T.M. Alexander Statue Committee, out of five finalists, Vinnie Bagwell’s design, titled “Philadelphia’s First Lady of the Law, Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander,” was the winner.
“Honoring Sadie T. M. Alexander through public art has been a priority of mine since my colleagues and I introduced the idea through a City Council resolution,” said Parker…