Patricia Ann Blackmon is a prosecutor and former judge in Cleveland, Ohio. Blackmon was born in 1950 in Oxford, Mississippi, and was the sixth child of 11. Blackmon attended the segregated Rowan Junior School in Jackson, Mississippi, and graduated from Lanier High School in 1968. During her high school years, she participated in the Upward Bound program at Tougaloo College in Jackson, which was the brainchild of US President Richard Nixon.
Blackmon received a Bachelor of Arts degree in African American studies, political science, and history magna cum laude from Tougaloo College in Tougaloo, Mississippi, in 1972. After graduating, Blackmon boarded the Greyhound Bus on North Lamar Street for Cleveland, Ohio, where she was admitted to Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in Cleveland, Ohio, on a full tuition scholarship. She did not live in the dormitory but in the home of a faculty member, Ann Aldrich, who later became a federal judge for the Northern District of Ohio. During Blackmon’s junior year, she accepted a position in the Witness Victim Program in 1974, serving as a Counselor. She received a Juris Doctorate in 1975 and was admitted to the Ohio State Bar. She continued serving as an assistant director of the Victims Witness Program and left in 1977.
From 1977 to 1980, Blackmon was the Assistant Prosecutor for the City of Cleveland and the city’s first night prosecutor. From 1986 to 1989, she was appointed the Chief Prosecutor. At that point in her career as a trial lawyer, she had already litigated 650 cases. In 1990, she began serving as Staff Attorney for the Ohio Turnpike Commission. A year later, in 1991, Blackmon started serving as a judge of the Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals, which is the largest and busiest appellate court in Ohio and was the first female African American woman elected as a judge on the court of appeals in Ohio and has served five judicial terms. In 2014, she reran unopposed in the general election and retired in 2021.
The Honorable Patricia Ann Blackmon, a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame, “Evening of Stars, A Celebration of Educational Excellence” by the United Negro College Fund alumni, the Trailblazer Award from Cuyahoga Democratic Women’s Caucus, and an honorary doctorate from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and its Alumna of the year.
Otis D. Alexander, Library Director at Saint John Vianney College Seminary & Graduate School in Miami, Florida, has also directed academic and public libraries in the District of Columbia, Indiana, Texas, and Virginia. In addition, he has been a library manager in the Virgin Islands of the United States as well as in the Republic of Liberia. His research has appeared in Public Library Quarterly, Scribner’s Encyclopedia of American Lives, and Virginia Libraries journal. Alexander received the Bachelor of Arts and Master of Science degrees from the University of the District of Columbia and the Master of Library & Information Science degree from Ball State University. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree from International University and studied additionally at Harvard Graduate School of Education Leadership for Academic Librarians, Oberlin Conservatory of Music Voice Performance Pedagogy, and Atlanta University School of Library & Information Studies.
