James Alan Carew

James Alan Carew was born in 1898 in Topeka, Kansas to James Alan Carew, Sr. and Anna Cornelia Hardeman Carew. He lived in Topeka until 1907, the year his father died. He then lived in Morristown, Tennessee from 1907 to 1916.

In June 1917, Carew reported in his WWI draft registration card that he was employed as a bellman at the Yates Hotel in Syracuse, New York. He was drafted in November 1917 and served through the end of the war in 1918.

According to his Yale Law application, he attended Morristown College in Tennessee and Wilberforce College before going to Syracuse University, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1923. At Syracuse, he joined the Iota Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha.

At the time he applied to the Yale Law School in 1924, he was living in Chicago, Illinois. He entered the Yale Law School with the class of 1927. As a Yale student, he transferred to the Zeta Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha and became the chapter’s secretary.

In his Yale scholarship application, he explained that while in school, "I work each summer as a waiter in summer resorts, steamboats, or on railway trains."

In August 1926, Carew died in Buffalo, New York, where he was employed on a boat. The Buffalo News reported that he drowned while swimming. He was buried in Chicago.