Louis Stokes
He rose from the local housing projects to serve 30 years in the U.S. House, becoming a potent symbol for his Cleveland–based majority-black district.
Stokes was persuaded to enter the political arena and ran for office by his brother and by community members he had served for decades as a civil rights lawyer. Stokes’ accomplishments in Congress were substantive and of historic proportions.
Among his legacies were the chairmanships of the Select Committee on Assassinations, the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He also served as chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.
He was also the first African American to win a seat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee.
Stokes used his success to fight for more opportunities for millions of African Americans, saying, “I’m going to keep on denouncing the inequities of this system, but I’m going to work within it. To go outside the system would be to deny myself—to deny my own existence. I’ve beaten the system. I’ve proved it can be done—so have a lot of others.”
He added: “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? That’s what’s wrong in the society. The ordinary black man doesn’t have the same chance as the ordinary white man does.”
In 1998, Stokes chose not to run for re-election. He retired from public service and moved to Silver Springs, Maryland. He died in 2015 at age 90.
