Juanita Stout; First U.S. Black Woman Elected as Judge

Juanita Kidd Stout, the first black woman to be elected a judge in the United States, has died in Philadelphia at age 79, hospital officials said Saturday.

She died of leukemia at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital on Friday.

A fixture in the Pennsylvania justice system for decades, Stout made history in 1959 when she was elected to a seat on the Philadelphia Municipal Court. Ten years later she was appointed to the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.

She commanded wide respect among colleagues for braving death threats while taking a tough stand against gang violence in the 1960s. Among her more famous cases was the 1993 trial in absentia of former hippie guru Ira Einhorn, a fugitive now living in France, who was convicted of the 1977 murder of his girlfriend, Holly Maddux.

Ten years ago, Stout made history a second time by becoming the first black woman to be appointed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. She was forced to retire from the position a year later at age 70, but then returned to the Common Pleas Court. She earned a music degree from the University of Iowa and taught music in Oklahoma before marrying in 1942 and moving to Washington.

After World War II, Stout earned master’s and doctoral degrees in law at Indiana University. She came to Philadelphia as administrative law secretary for a federal judge, went into private practice and was appointed assistant district attorney.