Date: 2015-09-08
Speaker: JACKSON LEE (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. Louis Stokes rose from the local housing projects to serve 30 years in the U.S. House. becoming a potent symbol for his Clevelandbased majorityblack district. Reluctant to enter the political arena. Stokes was persuaded to run for office by his prominent brother and by community members he had served for decades as a civil rights lawyer. His accomplishments were substantive and of historic proportions. The first Black to represent Ohio. Stokes chaired several congressional committees (including the Permanent Select Intelligence Committee) and was the first African American to win a seat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee. He used his success to try to increase opportunities for millions of African Americans. saying. "Im going to keep on denouncing the inequities of this system. but Im going to work within it. To go outside the system would be to deny myselfto deny my own existence. Ive beaten the system. Ive proved it can be doneso have a lot of others." Stokes continued. "But the problem is that a black man has to be extra special to win in this system. Why should you have to be a super black to get someplace? Thats whats wrong in the society. The ordinary black man doesnt have the same chance as the ordinary white man does." Louis Stokes was born on February 23. 1925. in Cleveland. Ohio. to Charles and Louise Cinthy (Stone) Stokes. His father worked in a laundromat and died when Louis was young. Stokes and his younger brother. Carl. were raised by their widowed mother. whose salary as a domestic was supplemented by welfare payments. Louis Stokes supplemented the family income by shining shoes around the Cleveland projects and clerking at an Army/ Navy store. He attended Clevelands public schools and served as a personnel specialist in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1946. He returned home with an honorable discharge. taking jobs in the Veterans Administration and Treasury Department offices in Cleveland while attending college at night with the help of the GI Bill. He attended the Cleveland College of Western Reserve University from 1946 to 1948. Stokes eventually earned a J.D. from the Cleveland Marshall School of Law in 1953 and. with his brother. opened the law firm Stokes and Stokes. On August 21. 1960. Louis Stokes married Jeanette (Jay) Francis. and they raised four children: Shelly. Louis C.. Angela. and Lorene. He devoted himself to his law practice. where he became involved in a number of civil rightsrelated casesoften working pro bono on behalf of poor clients and activists. He was an active participant in civic affairs. Working on behalf of the Cleveland NAACP. Stokes helped challenge the Ohio legislatures redistricting in 1965 that followed the Supreme Courts "one man. one vote" decision. The state legislature had fragmented the congressional districts that overlay Cleveland. diluting black voting strength. Stokes joined forces with Charles Lucas. a black Republican. to challenge that action. They lost their case in U.S. District Court. but based on Stokess written appeal. the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the brief in 1967. From that decision followed the creation of Ohios first majorityblack district. Later that year. in December 1967. Stokes made an oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court in Terry v. Ohio. a precedentsetting case that defined the legality of police search and seizure procedures. At his brother Carls behest Louis Stokes made his first run for elective office in 1968. He sought to win the seat in the newly created congressional district that encompassed much of the east side of Cleveland. Stokes was hardly a typical newcomer to the political campaign. First. his brother. Mayor Stokes. put the services of his political network at Louiss disposal. Stokes won by a landslide. He won his subsequent 14 general elections by lopsided margins in the heavily Democratic district taking as much as 88 percent of the vote. As a freshman Representative. Stokes received assignments on the Education and Labor Committee and the Internal Security Committee (formerly the House UnAmerican Activities Committee). He enthusiastically accepted the former assignment. believing Education and Labor would be a prime platform from which he could push the agenda for his urban district: job training. economic opportunity. and educational interests. But Stokes was less pleased with the Internal Security panel. which had lapsed into an increasingly irrelevant entity since its heyday investigating communists in the 1940s and 1950s. (House leaders disbanded it entirely in the mid1970s.) During his second term in the House. Stokes earned a seat on the Appropriations Committee. During more than two decades on the committee. Stokes steered hundreds of millions of federal dollars into projects in his home state. He eventually became an Appropriations subcommittee chair. or "cardinal." for Veterans. HUD. and Independent Agencies. Stokes was the second AfricanAmerican "cardinal" ever (the first. Julian Dixon of California. chaired the DC Subcommittee). Years later. Stokes said of the Appropriations Committee. "Its the only committee to be on. All the rest is window dressing." In addition to chairing an Appropriations subcommittee. Stokes is one of fewer than two dozen African Americans ever to chair a House committee and one of just a handful to wield the gavel on multiple panels: the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (100th Congress). the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (97th98th Congresses. 102nd Congress). and the Select Committee on Assassinations (95th Congress). The growing ranks of black Members sought to create a power base. realizingin the words of Representative William (Bill) Clay. Sr. of Missouri they "had to parlay massive voting potential into concrete economic results.". As freshman House Members. Stokes and Clay quickly developed an enduring friendship and became strong supporters of the formation of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). to promote economic. educational. and social issues that were important to African Americans. This strategy dovetailed with Stokess perception of his role as an advocate for the "black community" in his district. Stokes served as chairman of the CBC for two consecutive terms beginning in 1972. after Chairman Charles Diggs. Jr.. of Michigan resigned from the post. A centrist. Stokes was widely credited with shepherding the group away from the polarizing politics of various black factions toward a more stable and organized policy agenda. Using his position as CBC chairman and his increasing influence on the Appropriations Committee. Representative Stokes pushed a legislative agenda that mirrored the needs of his majorityblack district. He earned a reputation as a congenial but determined activist for minority issues. consistently scoring as one of the most liberal Members of the House in the Americans for Democratic Action and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations vote tallies. He advocated more funding for education (particularly for minority colleges). affirmative action programs to employ more blacks. housing and urban development projects. and initiatives to improve access to health care for workingclass Americans. In the 1980s. Stokes vocalized black concerns that the Ronald W. Reagan administration was intent on rolling back minority gains made in the 1960s and 1970s. He described conservative efforts to scale back school desegregation efforts and affirmative action programsas well as massive spending on military programsas a "full scale attack" on the priorities of the black community. He also was an early advocate of federal government intervention in the fight against HIV/AIDS. From his seat on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Stokes was a particularly forceful critic of the Reagan administrations foreign policy. He gained national prominence as a member of the House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran when he grilled Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North in 1987 about his role in funding anticommunist Nicaraguan Contras through weapons sales to Tehran. At one juncture he reminded North. "I wore [the uniform] as proudly as you do. even when our government required black and white soldiers in the same Army to live. sleep. eat and travel separate and apart. while fighting and dying for our country." House leaders repeatedly sought to capitalize on Stokess image as a stable. trustworthy. and competent adjudicatorturning to him to lead highprofile committees and handle controversial national issues. as well as the occasional ethics scandals in the House. When Representative Henry Gonzalez of Texas resigned as chairman of the Select Committee on Assassinations. Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) ONeill of Massachusetts tapped Stokes to lead the panel. which was investigating the circumstances surrounding the deaths of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. In 1978. Stokess committee filed 27 volumes of hearings and a final report that recommended administrative and legislative reforms. While the panel found that the King and the Kennedy murders may have involved multiple assassins (James Earl Ray and Lee Harvey Oswald have traditionally been described as lone killers). it concluded there was no evidence to support assertions of a broad conspiracy involving domestic groups or foreign governmentsan assessment that has been upheld for the past three decades. The committee did suggest that Oswald may have had an accomplice on Dealey Plaza. where Kennedy was killed in November Stokess chairmanship of the Select Committee on Assassinations led to his appointment by Speaker ONeill in 1981 as chairman of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (often called the Ethics Committee). Stokes steered the panel through a turbulent period that included investigations of Members implicated in the Federal Bureau of Investigations ABSCAM sting and a sex scandal that involved two House Members and current and former House Pages. During the 1990s. Stokess seniority made him an influential voice on the Appropriations Committee. In 1993. at the start of the 103rd Congress. he assumed the chairmans gavel of the Subcommittee on VA. HUD. and Independent Agencies. which controlled one of the largest chunks of discretionary spending in the federal budget. Stokes prodded federal agencies to hire and serve more minorities. Republicans praised him for his nonpartisan leadership of the subcommittee. but when the GOP won control of the House in the 1994 elections. and Stokes became the Ranking Member of the panel. he often found himself fighting Republican efforts to trim federal spending that involved cutting welfare programs. including public housing. In January 1998. Stokes announced his retirement from the House. noting that he wanted to leave "without ever losing an election." Moreover. a new generation of rising black politicians Cleveland was displacing those of Stokess generation. Among his proudest accomplishments as a Representative. Stokes cited his ability to bring Appropriations Committee money to his district to address needs in housing and urban development and the opportunities that allowed him to set "historic precedents" as an African American in the House. "When I started this journey. I realized that I was the first black American ever to hold this position in this state." Stokes told a newspaper reporter. "I had to write the book . . . I was going to set a standard of excellence that would give any successor something to shoot for." After his congressional career. Louis Stokes resumed his work as a lawyer. He was a great American Heroto be admired and remembered by us all.