By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, Cleveland Urban News. Com and the Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper and Newspaper Blog. Tel: 216-659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Coleman is a 22-year political, legal and investigative journalist who trained for 17 years, and under six different editors, at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio.
(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com).
SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio- Louis Stokes, Ohio's first Black congressman, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 30 years and represented Ohio's largely Black 11th congressional district, formerly the 21st congressional district, died Tuesday at his home in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a prominent Cleveland suburb. He was 90- years- old.
A public viewing will be held from 7 am to 5 pm on Monday, Aug., 24 at the rotunda at Cleveland City Hall, where the former congressman will lie in state. It will be followed by a memorial service, a family spokesperson said.
Open-to-the public funeral services are Tuesday, Aug. 25 at 11 am at Olivet Institutional Baptist Church on Cleveland's east side at 8712 Quincy Avenue.
Burial services, however, are private.
"Our family is mourning the loss of our husband, father, grandfather and close confidant," the Stokes family said in a press release.
"He loved Cleveland and was honored to have the opportunity to represent its citizens in the United States Congress, and he was equally committed to our family, and his love knew no bounds," the family statement said. "It is this enduring love that will sustain us in the days and years to come."
The family said that the elder statesman died peacefully with his wife of 55 years, Jay Stokes, by his side, and that he was "guided by faith, while embracing the prayers and well wishes of family, friends and constituents."
Stokes announced publicly in July that he had been diagnosed with lung and brain cancer.
The former federal lawmaker served 15 terms in Congress representing Cleveland and several of its eastern suburbs before retiring in 1998.
He was a staunch advocate for the poor and disenfranchised and a one time chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. He was also once a member of the prominent Ways and Means Committee in Congress.
As the then head of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, he led investigations in the 1970s into the assassinations of president John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
After a retiring from Congress, Stokes worked as an executive attorney at the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm of Squires, Sanders and Dempsey, a position he held until 2012.
His younger brother and only sibling, the late Carl B. Stokes, who died in 1996 of cancer of the esophagus, was the first Black mayor of the city of Cleveland and of a major American city. His daughter, Angela Stokes, is a Cleveland Municipal Court judge, while another, Lori Stokes, is a broadcast journalist, as is his son, Chuck Stokes.
Reared by a single mother after their father died when they were children, the Stokes brothers rose from a Cleveland housing project to become prominent political figures on the local, state, and national and international levels.
Louis Stokes was a Prince Hall Freemason, and a member of the Cleveland Alumni chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. He and his second wife, Jay, have seven grandchildren. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com).
(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com).
