Patricia Blackmon, a magna cum laude graduate of Tougaloo College, was born in Oxford, Mississippi. During the 1970s, in an effort to increase its African-American student population, Cleveland-Marshall sent then-Professor and fellow Hall of Fame honoree Ann Aldrich south to recruit promising students studying at historically Black colleges. Blackmon, with majors in African-American Studies, Political Science, and History, was such a student, bound to excel. And she has: both in law school and, notably, as Chief Prosecutor for the City of Cleveland and as Assistant Director of the Victim/Witness Assistance Program. She was elected to a Judgeship on the Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals in 1991, the first African-American woman in Ohio to serve on any of the state’s appeals courts, and is now serving her third term with distinction. Blackmon was inducted into the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame and received the Law Alumni Association’s 1996 Recognition Award.