Mahala Ashley Dickerson (U.S. National Park Service)

Born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1912, Mahala Ashley Dickerson grew up in the American South and graduated from Tennessee’s Fisk University in 1935. She earned a law degree in 1945 from Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C., one of the nation’s most prestigious black universities.

Alabama to Alaska

Dickerson returned to Alabama, where she became the first black female lawyer in the state in 1948. She spent the next six decades in the legal profession and made a name for herself representing people who faced discrimination. After spending three years practicing law in Alabama, she relocated to Indiana in 1951. There, she became only the second black woman admitted to the bar in that state.

A few years later, Dickerson took a vacation to Alaska where she grew enamored with the landscape and natural beauty. After a brief return to Indiana, Dickerson decided to make the move north. Upon filing a claim for a 160-acre homestead in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley near Wasilla in 1958, Dickerson became the territory’s first black homesteader.