Juanita Kidd Stout

Class of
1981
Juanita Kidd Stout

Juanita Kidd Stout

“Juanita Kidd Stout has become a legend in her own time. All her life she has been, as her mother encouraged, ‘useful.’”
John Hope Franklin

Biography

Oklahoma native Juanita Kidd Stout was educated at Lincoln University (1935-1937) in Missouri, as well as the universities of Iowa (1939), Colorado, Minnesota, and Indiana University (1948 and 1954), receiving her masters of law degree and doctor of jurisprudence. In 1939, Mrs. Stout taught music in the public school at Seminole, Oklahoma, and, in 1941, taught music at Booker T. Washington High School in Sand Springs, Oklahoma. She married Charles Stout and the couple settled in Philadelphia in the 1950’s where Juanita served as Assistant District Attorney. In 1959, she was elected to the bench as Judge of the County Court of Philadelphia and was re-elected to the post twice by the highest vote margin given any qualified Judge at that time. Her life story has appeared in Time, Life, Ebony, Jet, and The Wall Street Journal, and her article, “Why Must the Taxpayer Subsidize Immorality?,” was widely read in the April, 1965 edition of Reader’s Digest. In 1963 President John F. Kennedy appointed her as a member of the U.S. Delegation to Kenya and American Specialist at the State Department in 1967.

Fun fact

Juanita Kidd Stout was the first African American woman admitted to the Oklahoma Bar and the first to be elected to the bench in the United States. She was named “Outstanding Woman Lawyer of the Year” in 1965.

Oklahoma connections

Stout was born in Wewoka, Oklahoma.

Hometown

Wewoka

Profession

Jurist

Presenter

Born

1919

Died

1998
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