Sara J. Harper (born August 10, 1926) is a former member of the Eighth District Court of Appeals. Harper is African-American. She was raised in a public housing project in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

. Harper got her undergraduate and law degrees from

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Reser ...

. Harper 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 Ohio Governor

James A. Rhodes James Allen Rhodes (September 13, 1909 – March 4, 2001) was an American Republican politician who served as Governor of Ohio from 1963 to 1971 and again from 1975 to 1983. , Rhodes was one of only seven U.S. governors to serve four four-year ...

, a position to which she was elected for a six-year-term in 1971. In 1980 Harper was the Republican Candidate for Chief Justice of Ohio. She also ran for a seat as a justice of the Ohio Supreme Court in 1994. She was president of the Cleveland branch of the NAACP for some of the 1980s. For a time she served in the United States Marine Corps judiciary. In 1990 she became a member of the Ohio Court of Appeals. She also co-founded the first victims' rights program in the country. Harper is a member of Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church in Cleveland.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Harper, Sara J. 1926 births Ohio Republicans Lawyers from Cleveland Case Western Reserve University alumni Ohio state court judges Living people African-American judges American women judges Baptists from Ohio 21st-century African-American people 21st-century African-American women 20th-century African-American people 20th-century African-American women