More than 50 years after his election, the City of Cleveland honored Carl B. Stokes, the local and national political icon who opened his autobiography with this line: “For a brief time in Cleveland, I was the man of power.”
Stokes was the first Black Democrat elected to the Ohio legislature in 1962 and became the first Black mayor of a major U.S. city when he was elected in Cleveland in 1967.
Mayor Justin Bibb, City Council members, Stokes’ family and community leaders remembered the late mayor at a gathering in the City Hall rotunda Monday afternoon.
Bibb said that Stokes drew up the “blueprint” for other Black mayors to win election around the country. He compared Cleveland to Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, cities traditionally seen as the epicenters of the Civil Rights Movement.
“Starting today, the world’s going to know that Cleveland is the birthplace of Black political power in this country,” Bibb said.
Here are a few pivotal events from Stokes’ remarkable career.
‘A hardheaded realist’
In his book “Promises of Power: A Political Autobiography,” Stokes wrote that he learned “the hard basics of politics” from John O. Holly, whom Stokes described as “a greasy haired, short, very black, homely man from Alabama” and “one of the most remarkable men I have known.”
In the 1930s and ’40s, Holly helped Black Clevelanders get jobs by threatening businesses with boycotts. He later organized Black voters for local and statewide campaigns. At 21, Stokes landed a job as Holly’s driver and peppered him with questions.
“Holly’s responses and the actual experience of being with him as he put together a state-wide political machine were my primary-level education in politics,” Stokes wrote. “These cumulative experiences taught me to be a hardheaded realist in most ways; as one who took to politics as a duck does to water, I quickly developed a sure eye and an ability to sense the other man’s bottom line.”
‘Most respected’
After Stokes’ election as mayor of Cleveland, a painting of his face appeared on the cover of Time magazine, one of the most popular news publications of that era. In 1970, Time commissioned an opinion survey “to determine which black leaders were most respected by black people at large,” Stokes wrote in his autobiography. “The top two were organizations, the NAACP and the SCLC. I was next. No other single man was as respected by the people.”
‘Keep the lid on’
Many American cities experienced uprisings and violence after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968, but Stokes engaged a wide range of community leaders to walk the streets of Cleveland with him and help “keep the lid on,” as he described it in his autobiography. But he also expressed some ambivalence about the effort.
“In a way it was unfortunate that we succeeded as well as we did, because it only confirmed the establishment’s wager that in backing me [for mayor] they were buying insurance” against racial tension, Stokes wrote. “I tried, though, to get across the point that the community had calmed itself. … [But] reporters focused on Carl Stokes.”
Still, Stokes seized the opportunity to seek lasting change. He launched Cleveland NOW!, an ambitious revitalization plan that would rely on public and private funds. The plan was to raise $1.5 billion over 10 years to fund youth activities and employment, community centers, health clinics, housing and economic renewal projects. The project met its early funding goals, but interest waned after newspapers reported that Fred “Ahmed” Evans had received grants. Evans was the leader of the Black Nationalists of New Libya, a group that engaged in a deadly shootout with Cleveland police in Glenville in July 1968.
‘The Cuyahoga could no longer be an open sewer’
When the Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969, Stokes seized the opportunity to call attention to a longstanding concern of his, the environmental conditions in cities. The next morning, he invited media members on a tour of sites along the river.
“Here was a chance to define the problem, to describe what the administration thought needed to be done to solve it,” write David and Richard Stradling in their 2015 book “Where the River Burned: Carl Stokes and the Struggle to Save Cleveland.” “During the pollution tour, Stokes attempted to assign meaning to the fire. He argued that the city was not in a position to control the pollution within its borders.
“Stokes needed allies, and he sought them in the press, the federal government, and the environmental movement. If Cleveland was going to change, the Cuyahoga could no longer be an open sewer, let alone a fire hazard. Changing the river would take years and millions of dollars. It would also take a change in thinking about the Cuyahoga. It was not irredeemable; it could be reclaimed, and perhaps even become a living river again.”
