Newspaper Article

'FUSS AND BOTHER'
OVER A STATE JUDICIAL PIONEER
(Friday, June 30th, 2000)

Friends and fellow members of the legal profession remembered Judge Juanita Kidd Stout yesterday by unveiling her portrait at a City Hall ceremony, but perhaps it was a cousin who best captured her essence in words.

"Now, why did you all do this?" Lenore H. Cameron asked the audience in a high-pitched, slow drawl, imitating Stout. "You know I don't like fuss and bother."

They did it, those attending said, because Stout, who died in 1998, was a "first of firsts." In 1959, she became the first black woman to serve as a Municipal Court judge, and in 1988, she became the first black woman to serve on a state Supreme Court.

She was also the judge who oversaw two of Philadelphia's biggest cases: the 1986 MOVE trial, in which police were blamed for starting the fire that burned the group's compound and killed 11 people, and the 1977 murder trial of Ira Einhorn.

"Justice Juanita Kidd Stout was our treasure," said Center City attorney Thomas L. McGill.

Stout graduated as valedictorian of her high school class at age 16, then earned a degree in music from the University of Iowa. She later graduated with a law degree from Indiana University.

She was a strong proponent of education, and she was outspoken against gang violence, deadbeat dads, the exclusion of blacks from juries - and bad grammar, said Jacqueline F. Allen, chair of the National Bar Association's Judicial Council of Philadelphia.

"She was not reluctant in correcting any error, no matter the source," Allen said.

"I tried cases in her courtroom, and she was a very, very stern taskmaster," said Mayor Street, one of those attending. "You left that courtroom a better lawyer, a better person, and a better citizen."

After she blamed police gunfire for the MOVE deaths in 1985, police attorneys sought her removal. After she took a stand against gang violence, she earned death threats.

When she reached the mandatory retirement age of 70, she left the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and returned to the Common Pleas Court as a senior judge, serving until her death at age 79.

She and her husband, Charles O. Stout, a teacher and professor who died in 1988, had no children.

Philadelphia artist Susan Schary was commissioned to paint Justice Stout's portrait. A graduate of Temple University's Tyler School of Art, Schary is a noted courtroom artist and knew Stout well.

"While I was painting the portrait, I felt like she was sitting right here on my shoulder," Schary said.

"I felt she was with me," she said. "That's how close she was to me in life."

By Sufiya Abdur-Rahman
srahman@phillynews.com
Staff Writer for
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
© 2000 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.