Mabel Haden; Pioneering Black Lawyer in D.C.

"Choose your school, Mabel," Ready told her, promising to pay her tuition. Instead of returning to Howard, she enrolled for her final semester at the less expensive Virginia State College, where she received her undergraduate degree in education in the early 1940s.

For the next several years, she taught at Neval Thomas Elementary School and other D.C. schools. Learning that a friend was attending Howard University law school at night, she decided she could, too. She received her law degree in 1948, graduating as president of her class.

In the early years of her practice, she was a criminal defense attorney. She acquired many of her clients while sitting on the front bench of criminal court where she eagerly waited for the judge to assign her a case. (The front seat was called "the mourners' bench," she recalled, because she and her fellow lawyers were so desperate for clients.) She eventually saved enough money to open an office and switched from criminal to civil law.

She also continued teaching into the 1950s, then devoted herself full time to law.

Although she worked seven days a week, she found time to get her master's degree in law from Georgetown University in 1956. She and a classmate were the first women to receive the degree, and Ms. Haden was the first African American woman to do so. She also got her real estate broker's license.

Sandra Robinson, her niece and protege, recalled that Ms. Haden wanted to be around people and action. When she wasn't working, she loved to dance and listen to gospel and rhythm and blues, especially the sounds of Ray Charles, Brook Benton and Wilson Pickett. She also traveled a great deal, wrote poetry and held poetry readings.

In 1987, she represented District popcorn vendors who had been prohibited from selling fresh popcorn on the streets. She won, after an hour-long popcorn summit produced a change in the ordinance.

She was a member of a number of professional, civic and political organizations and was co-founder and president of the Association of Black Women Attorneys. Among numerous awards, she received the Charles Hamilton Houston Medallion of Merit from the Washington Bar Association.

Ms. Haden's husband, Russell Smith, died in 2002.

There are no immediate survivors.