Converted to EAD3 : Encoded Archival Description (EAD), Version 3 : Release: 1.1.1 : Release Date: 2019-12-16. Validating against latest version of schema.
Contact information: https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mss.contact
Catalog Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/mm99084478
Collection material in English
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the LC Catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically.
The papers of Juanita Kidd Stout, lawyer and judge, were given to the Library of Congress by her estate and by Tyrone S. Drummond in 2000.
The papers of Juanita Kidd Stout were arranged and described by Joseph K. Brooks with the assistance of Marjorie Torney in 2002. The finding aid was updated in 2023 by Maria Farmer as part of a division-wide remediation project by the Inclusive Description Working Group.
Items have been transferred from the Manuscript Division to other custodial divisions of the Library. A drawing has been transferred to the Prints and Photographs Division, and video and audiotapes have been transferred to the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division. All transfers have been identified in these divisions as part of the Juanita Kidd Stout Papers.
The status of copyright in the unpublished writings of Juanita Kidd Stout is governed by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, U.S.C.).
The papers of Juanita Kidd Stout are open to research. Researchers are advised to contact the Manuscript Reading Room prior to visiting. Many collections are stored off-site and advance notice is needed to retrieve these items for research use.
Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Container number, Juanita Kidd Stout Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The papers of Juanita Kidd Stout (1919-1998) span the years 1873-1998, with the bulk of the material concentrated between 1948 and 1998. In October 1959, the governor of Pennsylvania appointed Stout a judge of the municipal court in Philadelphia County while she was a candidate for the post in the Philadelphia municipal elections. That November, she won a ten-year term on the court, thus becoming the first African American woman appointed or elected judge of a court of record or general jurisdiction in the United States. In 1988, when she was appointed to the Pennsylvania supreme court, Stout became the first African American female justice on a state supreme court. The papers are organized in the following series: Personal File , General Correspondence , Legal File , Subject File , Speeches and Writings File , and Oversize .
The family papers of the Personal File include material on Stout's parents, Henry M. and Mary A. Kidd, who emigrated from Missouri and Mississippi respectively to settle in Seminole County, Oklahoma, when the state was still a territory. The family file also includes material on the Kidd and Chandler families and on Charles O. Stout, a college professor and Juanita Kidd Stout's husband.
Correspondents in the General Correspondence series include Lawrence L. Boger, David L. Boren, John W. Hamilton, Gail Nelson, Henry Ponder, Richard S. Schweiker, and Arlen Specter.
Most of the Legal File documents Juanita Kidd Stout's service on the municipal court and the court of common pleas, both for Philadelphia County, and as a justice of the Pennsylvania supreme court. She developed an interest in juvenile delinquency, youth gangs, and welfare while serving as an assistant district attorney for Philadelphia County during the 1950s, and once on the municipal court she was noted for her outspokenness on these issues in the local and national media, for her tough sentencing of recalcitrant juvenile offenders, and for her continuing contact with juvenile offenders she found to be redeemable.
The bulk of Stout's service was as a judge specializing in murder trials on the court of
common pleas. Most of the common pleas case files relate to trials or hearings where she
rendered a written opinion. These were usually either bench trials, where she sat
without a jury and ruled on both the facts and the law in a case, or
Stout's tenure on the Pennsylvania supreme court was brief, 1988-1989, because she was
close to the Commonwealth's mandatory retirement age when appointed. Much of the supreme
court case file is taken up with actions against corrupt or otherwise troubled
Pennsylvania judges.
Other cases in which Stout was involved include
The estates grouping of the Legal File includes material related to Stout's service as executor of the estate of her close friend, lawyer, and civic and civil rights activist Sadie T. M. Alexander, one of the first African American women awarded a doctorate degree in the United States and the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar.
Stout tracked colleagues and African American and female pioneers of bar and bench through an extensive biographical file that is part of the Subject File . Many lawyers and judges whose careers she followed were also correspondents, including Raymond P. Alexander, Sadie T. M.. Alexander, Anne X. Alpern, Genevieve Blatt, Jean M. Capers, Mahala A. Dickerson, William H. Hastie, Charles H. Houston, Frederica Massiah-Jackson, Robert N. C. Nix, Leah Sears-Collins, Charles Z. Smith, Arlen Spector, and Ronald A. White.
The collection is arranged in six series:
Catalog Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/mm99084478
Biographical material, family papers, correspondence, awards, newspaper clippings, estate papers, scrapbooks, and printed matter.
Arranged alphabetically by type of material or subject and thereunder chronologically.
Correspondence with attached material between Stout and friends, professional associates, businesses, and the public related to personal and professional activities and public issues.
Arranged chronologically.
Case files, administrative files, dockets, correspondence, printed matter, topical files, and miscellaneous material.
Arranged alphabetically by court, type of material, or subject and thereunder chronologically.
Printed matter, photographs, correspondence, organizational records, and miscellaneous material.
Arranged alphabetically by subject or type of material and thereunder chronologically.
Articles, speeches, event programs, printed matter, and miscellaneous material.
Arranged by type of material and thereunder chronologically.
Docket, Municipal Court, Philadelphia County, Pa.