by Nick Castele
Former Ohio Congressman Louis Stokes has died at the age of 90. Stokes was the first African-American representative elected to the House from Ohio. He was also a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Louis Stokes served 15 terms in Congress. Friends and colleagues remember him as a gentleman and a jovial man with a big smile who fought for the interests of some of the poorest neighborhoods in America.
Stokes was born in Cleveland and lived in public housing in the city's Central neighborhood. His parents both came from Georgia, but met in Cleveland. When his father died suddenly, his mother, Louise, raised him and his brother Carl on her own, cleaning houses to make a living.
In a 2007 interview, Stokes described one night when his mother was sick. He said he took her hand to comfort her.
"And as I felt those hard, calloused hands, from scrubbing people’s floors in order to give me an education, I began to understand what she meant when she said, ‘Get something in your head, so you don’t have to work with your hands like I’ve worked with my hands,'" he told ideastream's Dee Perry in 2007.
Stokes graduated high school, served in a segregated Army during World War II, and attended college on the GI Bill. He went to law school, and worked as an attorney for the NAACP.
There, he took a case defending a man who’d been stopped and searched by Cleveland police. The case, Terry v. Ohio, went to the U.S. Supreme Court. Stokes lost, and the court’s ruling set the precedent for stop-and-frisk police searches.
Louis Stokes was more successful in another case, challenging redistricting in Ohio.
"It took all of the black population and split it around the county in such a way as to dilute the black base in that district," he said in the 2007 interview.
The subsequent Supreme Court decision led to a majority black Congressional district in Northeast Ohio. Stokes thought his brother Carl, who had won election as mayor of Cleveland, would run for the seat. When he declined, Louis ran for the House instead, becoming Ohio’s first black Congressman.
Norman Krumholz, former planning director in Carl Stokes' mayoral administration, recalls seeing the brothers at a celebration of the mayor's reelection in 1969.
"They both seemed to be reflecting on the fact they had won elections that previously had been denied positions to African Americans," Krumholz said. "And they both saw their elections as being, I think, the forerunner of the future of the growth of black political power in the city, in the state and the United States."
Louis Stokes said he felt pressure to write the script for future black elected officials.
"I couldn’t go to Washington and just do it like an ordinary white Congressman would do," he said. "I had to write the book."
Stokes and other black representatives organized the Congressional Black Caucus to fight for their interests.
Leonard Moore, a professor at the University of Texas who’s studied the Stokes brothers, said that was revolutionary.
"Although they were a small group, you know what I mean, they held considerable influence," Moore said. "And in many ways they became the de facto voice of black America."
Stokes also worked with other black leaders to build a political infrastructure at home in Northeast Ohio, founding the 21 st Congressional District Caucus.
"They used that to leverage a power base for the African-American community specifically, as well as for the candidates," said Susan Hall, the director of community relations at the Western Reserve Historical Society.
In Congress, Stokes chaired the house select committee that investigated the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., criticizing the FBI for its handling of the case, but clearing the government of involvement. In an interview with NPR, Stokes stood by the committee’s findings that it’s possible there was a conspiracy behind King’s killing.
"I believe that our findings in which we say that there was a possibility of a conspiracy," he told NPR's Tell Me More. "I rely upon that, I adopt that as part of our findings. But I also believe very strongly that James Earl Ray was the assassin."
Stokes grilled Lt. Col. Oliver North during the Iran-Contra hearings. He also served on the House Appropriations Committee, where he pushed funding for education, affirmative action and public housing.
Despite his accomplishments, Stokes received reminders of the pressure placed on African Americans to explain themselves. In 1991, a Capitol Police officer temporarily refused to let him into his office garage, according to news reports from the time.
In his final years, Stokes remained active in public service. In January, he listened to hours of community testimony, as part of the governor’s task force on police relations. At the end of the meeting, he thanked participants, saying he was reminded of similar gatherings after the Hough riots in 1966, when people gave testimony about police brutality, poor housing and limited access to healthcare.
"It meant so much to me to see our community expressing their will in the same way I saw those people from Hough 49 years ago talk about the same, almost similar problems," he told the audience.
President Obama remembered Stokes in a statement, calling him "a passionate voice for those less fortunate." According his family, Louis Stokes died peacefully, his wife of 55 years at his side.
Annie Wu, David C. Barnett and Brian Bull contributed to this report.
