April 19, 2018

The Housing Authority Headquarters in Chester honored a federal judge who made it her mission to improve conditions within the city's affordable housing.

Conditions at Chester's Housing Projects were so dire, residents took the city to court and won."Control of it was taken away from the city," said Stephen Fisher. "By the federal court. Judge Shapiro was the judge that ruled that. Then she took control of it and oversaw it for the next 20 years."Fisher is the current Housing Authority executive director, hired by Judge Norma Shapiro.

He says she was a unique individual who used her position to advance a just cause."She wanted to make sure the clock never turned back to what caused the problems in the first place," he said.And the four women who filed the class action law suit, Barbara Muhammad, Ernestine Tilghman, Ella Thompson and Tvonne Carrington, were also immortalized with their pictures in bronze near the building's entrance.