Ethel D. Allen was the first African American councilwoman elected to an at-large seat on the Philadelphia City Council.
Allen once described herself as, "BFR—a black female
Republican, an entity as rare as a black elephant and just as smart." In
her career she challenged sexism and racism, and was devoted to the
disadvantaged in her community as both a health care provider and a
politician.
One of three children, Allen was born in 1929, in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, where she lived and worked for most of her life. Her
father, Sidney S. Allen, Sr. was a self-employed tailor, and her mother,
known only as Mrs. Sidney S. Allen, was the only one of Allen's parents
to graduate from high school. As a single parent she took on the legal
guardianship of a child called Kathy Ann, whose parents had died shortly
after her birth.
Allen's early education was at the predominantly white John W.
Haliahan Girls Catholic High School, and then at all-black West Virginia
State College, where she majored in chemistry and biology with a minor
in mathematics. Fascinated by politics from an early age, she ran for
student council president in high school, and for council president in
her senior year at West Virginia, losing by only two votes (one of which
was her own).
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Source: Changing the Face of Medicine
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