How a social media mistake can remind us all of the importance of teaching Black history

The photos of two icons of Philadelphia history, the lawyer and economist Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander and the renowned opera singer Marian Anderson, seemed to be all over social media recently.

But for the wrong reasons.

And in the process, we might have all gotten a lesson in why — despite assertions to the contrary in some circles — it is so very important to keep teaching Black history.

That’s because several Twitter users, in an effort to applaud Black History Month, decided to honor Charlotte Ray — the first Black woman to graduate from law school in the United States — by illustrating their posts with images of Alexander or Anderson.

Some Twitter users, including reputable organizations such as the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce Law School, mistakenly used a photo of Alexander in place of Ray.

And this error is hardly a new one. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund made a similar gaffe last year, posting a stylized image of Anderson as a Ray substitute.

As someone who has spent a lot of time researching and writing about efforts to preserve the Strawberry Mansion home of the renowned African American artist Henry O. Tanner (who was a great-uncle of Alexander), I immediately recognized the photos of Alexander in her cap and gown when Twitter users were misidentifying her as Ray.

As I saw all of these tweets meant to honor Ray popping up recently with photos of Alexander and Anderson, I couldn’t help but try to set the record straight. I retweeted the Defense Fund’s post with a note that may not have been delivered with as gentle a tone as I might have liked: “Come on @NAACP_LDF This is clearly Marian Anderson in this photo.”

During my Twitter rant, I tagged Nina Banks, a Bucknell University economics professor who edited a book on Alexander’s speeches and writings. Banks is also working on a biography of Alexander.

Banks pointed out one thing I had not noticed. One Twitter account that praised Ray not only used the wrong photo, but it also said that Ray graduated from Harvard in 1872. In her tweet, Banks noted that Harvard did not admit women into its law school in the 19th century.

It is notable that Ray was the first Black woman certified to practice law in the United States.

That said, both Alexander and Anderson are historic women in their own right.

Alexander, who was born in Philadelphia, came from the well-known Tanner family, a lineage that includes Henry O. Tanner and Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner, who first came to Philadelphia in the 1860s to work as editor of the Christian Recorder newspaper.

Alexander, who studied at Penn, was the first Black person to earn a Ph.D. in economics in the United States, in 1921. But she found that as a Black woman in an America still dominated by Jim Crow, she could not find work in her field.

In 1923, she married Raymond Pace Alexander, then a recent Harvard University Law School graduate, and later enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and in 1927 became its first Black woman graduate.

Together, Raymond Alexander — who later became the first Black judge in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court — and Sadie Alexander fought school segregation in the Philadelphia suburbs. Their earliest efforts came more than 20 years before the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional.

Coincidentally, Sadie Alexander, who was born in 1898, and Anderson, born in 1897, were good friends, said Alexander’s daughter, Rae Alexander-Minter, an academic who lives and works in New York.

In a recent interview, Alexander-Minter said that she recalls the times that “Aunt Marian” used to visit the Alexander home on Jefferson Street in North Philadelphia for dinner.

Then, there was the time Alexander-Minter and both her parents visited Anderson and her husband, Orpheus Fisher, at their home in Danbury, Conn. The Alexander family stayed in a guest house at the Connecticut estate.

Asked how she felt about her mother’s photo being used to represent Ray, Alexander-Minter said:

“This is why we need to teach history and African American history. We cannot erase the past. I feel bereft and I feel sad.”

Of course, Anderson, another Philadelphia native, is perhaps best known for singing solo in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to give a concert at Constitution Hall because she was Black.

Anderson went on to achieve a number of other firsts, including being the first Black person to sing on the main stage of the Metropolitan Opera, in 1955.

To some, misidentifying the subject of a photo on social media may seem like a minor slight. But for me, at a moment when politicians and educators and policymakers are questioning the value of teaching Black history, making sure that the little things are right can be one incremental way of ensuring that those vitally important lessons are not completely erased.

Jillian Pirtle, the CEO of the Marian Anderson Museum and Historical Society in South Philadelphia, said she is not surprised that people who are trying to acknowledge Black History Month by honoring one person mistakenly use photographs of other Black people.

“This happens often,” Pirtle said. “This is why it is so very important to have our historical landmarks and cultural institutions survive, thrive and be supported, like this museum, because this is how the masses are educated.”

It’s important for people “to honor our history,” Pirtle said. “But when they are trying to share our history and our cultural experiences, they need to invest the proper time, energy and resources in cultural institutions like ours.

“We can’t let them go by the wayside, or they will continue to share — and perpetuate — stories that are not accurate.”