Funeral services announced for retired judge Sara J. Harper of Cleveland, Harper the 1st Black woman elected to a state appellate court in Ohio...By Clevelandurbannews.com, Ohio's Black digital news leader

The Honorable Sara J. Harper

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor, associate publisher

CLEVELAND, Ohio-Retired judge Sara J. Harper, the first Black woman elected to a state appellate court in Ohio, has died. She was 98.

Services are entrusted to E.F. Boyd & Son Funeral Home, with visitation on Thursday, July 17 from 4-7pm at E.F. Boyd, and funeral services Friday, July 18 at Mt Olive Missionary Baptist Church with a 10am wake and an 11am funeral.

Harper was raised in a public housing project in Cleveland, Ohio, one of five siblings, all of them girls. She grew-up with the Stokes brothers. The late Louis Stokes was the first Black congressperson from Ohio, and his younger brother the late Carl B. Stokes was the first Black mayor of Cleveland and of a major American city.

Harper earned her undergraduate and law degrees from Case Western Reserve University. A Republican who had friends, associates and supporters across partisan lines, she worked as a prosecutor for the city of Cleveland in the 1960s. In 1970 she was appointed a judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court by then-Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes, a position to which she was elected for a six-year term in 1971. She also ran unsuccessfully for chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court in 1994. 

She was president of the Cleveland branch of the NAACP at one point during the 1980s and before then she served in the United States Marine Corps judiciary. In 1990 she was elected to the Ohio Court 8th district Court of Appeals bench, one of two Black women first elected to the position and to a state appellate court in Ohio.

Harper was a member of Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church in Cleveland. She is preceded in death by her late husband, the Honorable George Trumbo, and several sisters, including the late Constance "Connie" Harper, a long time editor of the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland. She leaves to cherish her memory five grown children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and a host of other family members, friends, and associates.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most-read Black digital newspaper and blog in Ohio. Tel. 216-659-0473. Email-editor@clevelandurbannews.com