GCLEABJ remembers Judge Sarah J. Harper

Judge Sarah J. Harper born August 10, 1926 passed away on Tues. July 8, 2025 at the age of

98 years. The beloved Judge Harper was a daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother and

devoted public servant.

A Cleveland native, who grew up in the Outhwaite Housing Projects, Harper graduated from the

Cleveland Public Schools and then went on to become the first African American woman to

graduate from Case Western Reserve University’s School of Law. She was the first woman to

serve on the judiciary of the United States Marine Corps Reserve and she co-founded the first

victims’ rights program in the country.

Also a former Cleveland NAACP president, she was active in the organization during the height

of Cleveland’s schools desegregation era and she served as an assistant city prosecutor and

judge for Cleveland Municipal Court before winning a seat on the Eighth District Court of

Appeals in 1990, becoming one of two African American women to be the first African-American

woman elected to a state appellate court in Ohio.

Harper is also the first African-American woman to sit by assignment as a visiting judge on the

Ohio Supreme Court and is the first African-American woman to run for a seat on that court,

paving the way for other African-Americans to seek election to the state's highest court.

She founded The Sara J. Harper Children's Library in Cleveland's Outhwaite Housing Projects

where Harper and her siblings grew up, all of them girls. The Volunteers of America recently

named a housing development for female veterans in her honor.

She is preceded in death by her husband, the late former Cleveland Municipal Court Judge

George Trumbo, sister the late Connie Harper, a longtime editor of the Call & Post Newspaper

as well GCLEABJ 2025 Hall of Fame Inductee, and sister Gloria Jean Fort.

Harper was laid to rest on Friday, July 18th after services at Mt. Olive Baptist Church where she

was a long-serving member.

(Photo by Louie Moore)