Mabel Haden; Pioneering Black Lawyer in D.C.

Mabel Haden, who was 97 when she died of cardiac arrest Oct. 12 at Providence Hospital, never dreamed of practicing law when she was growing up in rural Virginia in the early years of the last century. The nearby Blue Ridge Mountains might well have become molehills before a young black girl who got her early education in a one-room schoolhouse would grow up to be a lawyer.

Someone forgot to tell the precocious Ms. Haden, though. After working for years as a nanny, a teacher and a switchboard operator, she became one of the first African American female lawyers in the District. She practiced law for nearly four decades.

Throughout her career, Ms. Haden provided legal assistance to hundreds of indigent clients and tirelessly encouraged young African American women to go into law. She established and financed a scholarship fund to help young women interested in the law, and it led to the creation of the annual Red Dress Ball held by the Association of Black Women Attorneys.

"She was the real deal," said Washington lawyer Jack Oleander. "She was a great pioneer, and she did an awful lot to mentor young people. She not only helped young black students to become lawyers, she crossed racial lines to help all students."

Oleander recalled that Ms. Haden regularly collected old law books from firms around the city, using them to help build a law library for the District's now-closed Lorton prison.

Mabel Rebecca Dole Haden was born near Lynch Station, Va., on Feb. 17, 1909, or perhaps in 1904. (Census records are unclear, and she occasionally told people she was born in 1914.)

The eighth of 11 children, she recalled her mother telling her, "You are the smartest child I have." She read constantly, often taking her books and stealing away to read under beds, in closets or at an older sister's house.

She got her early education in a one-room school up the road from the family home; two older sisters were her teachers. When she was a little older, she and her sister Alice became students at the Allen Home School in Asheville, N.C., which was established for "colored girls" by white women from New England during Reconstruction. When Alice graduated, the Allen Home headmaster informed the girls' parents that the school "could not manage Mabel without Alice."

Ms. Haden, who told family members that she was "a stubborn and willful child who did not listen to anyone," transferred to the Barber-Scotia School for Girls, now a college, in Concord, N.C., then graduated in the mid-1920s from Pittsylvania County High School in Gretna, Va.

Unable to afford college, she took a teaching job in the public schools of Campbell County, Va., and later in the Danville, Va., area. She sent most of her salary home to help support the family.

Still determined to go to college, she moved to Washington, where she worked as a nanny for several years during the 1930s. At her mother's suggestion, she attended night school to prepare herself for college and received a second high school diploma. At last, in the 1940s, she enrolled at Howard University but ran out of money the semester before she was to graduate.

She took a job as a switchboard operator at a Catholic social services agency in the District. One day, a priest at the agency, the Rev. Michael J. Ready, asked her about her plans for the fall semester. Ms. Haden told him that she wanted to return to school but didn't have the money.