Mahala Ashley Dickerson grew up in Alabama on a plantation owned by her father.
Education
She attended a private school, Mission 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).
Career
She practiced with him for a year and then opened her own law office. 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.
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.".