Remembering Fiery Former Cleveland Councilwoman Jean Murrell Capers

Judge Jean Murrell Capers died Tuesday morning.  

Eugenia Mae Murrell was known as a “firebrand” and a “juggernaut.”  The Call and Post newspaper called her “a virtual human buzzsaw.”  But to her nephew Paul Murrell Rose, Aunt Jean was Christmas.

“She was always taking us places, she was always taking us  to see Santa Claus at Higbee’s Department Store and the May Company department store and Halle’s department store.”

Jean Murrell was one of five children born in Kentucky.  During a speech at the City Club of Cleveland in 2015, Capers talked about the family’s move north in 1919.

 “My father had brought five children and his wife to Cleveland, the best location in the nation, in order for us to get the benefit of an integrated education because he had been educated in a segregated system, born in Kentucky.”

She graduated from Western Reserve University school of education at the age of 20, but her career ambitions didn’t stop at being a teacher.  After marrying Clifford Capers, she graduated with a law degree from Cleveland State University while also helping to raise her baby nephew Paul Rose.

“She finished law school in 1945 and she kissed my bottom for good luck on the bar exam.  And, of course, she passed.”

Rose remembers as a child campaigning with his aunt for Cleveland city council.

“She had a sound truck that she would put the sound equipment on top of the station wagon, and she had one theme record called 'Surely God is Able.'”

In 1949, Capers was able to win a seat on council and remained in office for the next decade.  She was the first African-American woman on Cleveland city council.

“She was the kind of person that you knew would have your back no matter what.  And the community knew when they put her in place that this was somebody who would fight for ‘em and she did,” says Cleveland Municipal Judge Ronald Adrine.  Capers supported him early in his career.  He says you couldn’t find a more fiercely loyal person in your corner. 

“She was a juggernaut.  She was the kind of person who knew exactly where she wanted to go and had a strong idea as to how she was going to get there.  And you could either lead, follow or you could get the heck out of her way.”

Capers eventually lost her seat on city council but she continued to be a force in Cleveland politics including helping to elect the city’s first African-American mayor.  

“She more or less started the rumor that a negro was going to be running for mayor,” says her nephew Paul Rose.  “Then she started the rumor that that person was going to be Carl Stokes.”

In his autobiography, Carl Stokes said that Capers had not talked to him about drafting him for mayor.  “It was clear to me that Jean had a hustle in mind,” he wrote. 

Ronald Adrine says she was a role model who gave counsel behind the scenes.

“She was a person who was always looking for younger black people that she thought would be able to carry the weight of the black community’s problems on their back and carry them to a better place.”

Race was on Capers’ mind when she was inducted into the Cleveland City Club Hall of Fame in 2015.  She said she didn’t judge people based on their identities.

“I didn’t go by nationalities.  I went by the way you treated me and whether you were smart.”

Capers worked as an assistant attorney general for Ohio before Governor James Rhodes appointed her to a judgeship with the Cleveland Municipal Court in 1977.  Judge Ronald Adrine served on the bench with Capers in the 1980’s. 

“She was the kind of a person who believed that the law was supposed to serve the people.  And that if the law apparently wasn’t going to do that, she would find a way to interpret the law so that it could.”

Adrine recalls a story in Capers’ court when bad weather prevented most people from getting to court by the eight o’clock start time.

“Nobody else was there – no prosecutor, no defendants, no bailiff, no anybody.  And yet and still at the appointed hour, Judge Capers took the bench. She believed if she could get there, everybody else could get there.   And you know, she had struggled through a whole lot worse than weather.”

Jean Murrell Capers continued to practice law into her 90’s.  Her nephew says until recently, Capers continued to read the newspaper daily.  She died in her sleep at the age of 104.

ideastream's Nick Castele contributed to this story.