Judge Cheryl Grant's life devoted to balancing the scales of society

Following her father’s passing at a young age, Grant’s mother moved her family to Cincinnati's Evanston neighborhood. As she moved through middle school and eventually Withrow High School, teachers nominated Grant for scholarships that would help her stay in school and on a path toward college, which was a rare ambition among her peer group at the time. After high school, Black girls were commonly expected to go straight into a menial job as opposed to training for a career of greater substance. Even Grant's mother felt that way. But Grant’s vision for a greater future was vindicated by proving herself during her high school years, surmounting challenging circumstances and lingering prejudice along the way. She wasn’t sure which particular path she’d take or what doors might open for her. Grant’s initial thought reflected the abiding faith that always helped sustain her, and foreshadowed a life chapter to come many years later.

“I wanted to go to divinity school first, but options were very limited — there was nothing local, and such career paths for Black women were nil,” she says. “Then I thought about food sciences because as the oldest girl in my family, I had learned to cook for my brothers and sisters while my mother worked seven days a week. But I didn’t know of any Black dieticians; how would I earn a living?” Two of her friends were going to Bennett College for Girls, a Black school in South Carolina, but even if she got her mother to grudgingly support Grant's choice to go to college in the first place, going so far away was out of the question.

“So I said, ‘Fine, but I’m going to college, and I’m going to UC,’” Grant remembers. Given UC’s demographics and culture — this was the early ’60s and UC was still a municipal university — she knew it wouldn’t be easy. Yet she also anticipated finding new opportunities on campus while sharpening her own abilities and aspirations.

“UC still had some of the segregated rules and racist attitudes the city had back then … It was in everything — housing, health care, you name it. It was a continuation of what I’d seen since I was very young, where race had shaped my life because it was always in my face. I wound up working with the university president on making progress in these areas.”

“While I was a police officer, one of Cincinnati’s prominent attorneys asked me how I liked my job. I answered that most people I come into contact with need lawyers. So he said, ‘Well, why don’t you go to law school? Why don’t you apply to UC Law School?’ This was only about eight to ten weeks before school was supposed to start. I said it’s a little late, but if they’ll take me, I’ll go. I applied, I was accepted, and so I resigned as a police officer to go to school full-time.

“Through all of these events, I was able to get a feel for the criminal justice system, and that ultimately became my career path,” she says. “It was social worker, then police officer, then law school.”

At the time, she had no idea how much would be added to that resume in the years to come.

“I lived in the projects until my father passed, and Linda Bates Parker lived in the walk-up right across from Taft High School,” said Grant of the area where TQL Stadium, the home of soccer club FC Cincinnati, stands today. “We grew up together.”

Parker would eventually go to the University of Dayton while Grant, who was a year behind Parker in school, attended UC. Upon graduation, Parker returned to Cincinnati and worked in one of UC’s residence halls, which rekindled her strong friendship with Grant. They never stopped being, for all intents and purposes, sisters with similar passions and values.

“Linda always wanted to open doors for Black women, and I worked with her in organizations where we could do that,” Grant says. “Whenever there was a speaking opportunity, she would ask me to speak. She would say to people, ‘Can we talk?’ which became the name of her biannual conference to promote dialogue between women of different races and experiences. Parker worked tirelessly to help Black women prepare for a corporate world that had been traditionally closed to us. She gave me a sounding board and the freedom to deal with those challenges that I faced in Cincinnati trying to carve out a career. She was all about opening doors, encouraging communications.”

Grant fondly remembers Parker as a coach and a peer who did more for her than anyone else — a relationship that flowed from their history and personal closeness. Grant had known Parker's mother well from back in the neighborhood. She was there when Parker married her husband, Breland. She happily put her cooking and baking skills to work fixing Christmas dinner for Parker and Breland for many years. It was like extended family. And Grant was there when Linda founded Black Career Women Inc. in 1977 to provide career counseling and networking that facilitated the professional success of its constituents.

“There wasn’t anything she did that she didn’t want to participate in also,” Grant says. “She was with me every step of the way. No one did more for me than Linda did. She was at my sister’s funeral when she told me of her terminal cancer diagnosis. Later, she told me that a scholarship fund was established at UC in her name, and that she wanted me and two other close friends to see that the fund was endowed so that new generations of students could benefit. We all felt that was the least we could do for this great woman. Linda was just special.”

In July 1996, the Democrat candidate for Hamilton County Municipal Court Judge, District 3, dropped out of his race against a sitting Republican judge just a few months before the election. Grant was approached by her friend William McClain, Cincinnati’s first Black city solicitor and Hamilton County Common Pleas Court judge and a legend in the local legal community, who asked her to take the previous candidate’s place, believing she had a real chance to win.

“He was my mentor, and he’d been following me since I was a second-year law student,” Grant says. “He took me under his wing. He told me I could do it, and that I needed to do it. I said OK, I’ll do it.” Then Grant chuckles, noting the recurring pattern that had by then become familiar in her life — “I’ll do it.”

“I felt I’d given everything I could. I relied upon prayer, trying to make the right decisions and do the right thing, often having to hold my tongue which was tough. I knew that, as a human being, I can’t resolve it all. I saw so much tragedy and knew I’d keep seeing more, but I didn’t let it get me down. I just did what I could to hopefully make somebody else’s life better.”

Retiring from the bench hasn’t meant relinquishing the obligation she has always felt toward creating a more just world, or helping others on their particular quests to do the same.

“I believe I have a responsibility for giving to others, just as I’ve been given to. So, I like to support people who are starting off in their careers, who may be having trouble with their vision of where they want to go. One of the gifts God gave me is a discerning spirit, which I try to use to help others, drawing on all of my experience. I think that’s my contribution.”

Ever since she couldn’t pursue divinity school after graduating from Withrow, circling back to make good on that desire had been a priority on Grant’s bucket list. While she was a judge, she did so, using snippets of vacation time over the course of nine years to meet the requirements to earn her Master’s of Divinity degree in 2012. She is proud of the dedication to see that through, and feels blessed for what the experience has entailed, including notably her in-service training as a hospice chaplain. Today she is an associate minister at Zion Baptist Church in Avondale.