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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
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Former longtime congressman Louis Stokes, Ohio's first Black congressperson who served 30 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and died late last month at his home in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb, was remembered at the annual 11th Congressional District Caucus Labor Day Parade that kicked off at Kinsman Avenue and East 146th Street in Cleveland Monday morning.
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Led by Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams, who is Black, police were everywhere after a summer of unprecedented violence and killings in the largely Black major American city, including a shooting at Public Square in downtown Cleveland last month, and the drive by shooting last week on the city's east side that left five-year-old Raymond "Dink" Burnett dead from a stray bullet.
Buttons, fliers and other paraphernalia commemorating Stokes' reign over the 11th congressional district, which includes the city of Cleveland and several of its eastern suburbs, were distributed along the parade route.
Current Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge, a Warrensville Heights Democrat, carries on the tradition that Stokes started 44 years ago, and served as Grand Marshal of the parade, which stretched some two miles down Kinsman Avenue in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood on the city's largely Black east side.
It ended with a festival of fun, food, dancing and music at Luke Easter Park .
More that 200 units were in the parade as thousands lined the street to watch.
Fudge said that the annual gatherings is a coming together of the community and an opportunity to say thank you to her constituents, most of them Black, and a large number of whom live below the poverty line.
Marching bands, high steppers such as the Lady D Drill Team, local drum corps, a host of labor unions, and politicians were also among those there.
Dignitaries that attended, practically all of them Democrats like the late Stokes, include Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, Cleveland Councilmen Zack Reed and Jeff Johnson, Warrensville Heights Mayor Brad Sellers, state Reps. Bill Patmon (D-10) and John Barnes Jr. (D-12), Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish, Cleveland Municipal Court Judges Pauline Tarver, Ed Wade, and Emanuella Groves, and Ted Strickland, who is seeking the Democratic nomination in hopes of ousting Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman next year. Others include Common Pleas Judges Daniel Gaul and Joan Synenberg, and former congresswoman Betty Sutton, a Barberton Democrat and the youngest woman elected to congress at the then age of 29.
"We honored congressman Stokes today, and people came out to pay their respects to a giant in the community" state Rep Barnes, who is Black, told Cleveland Urban News.Com, Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper..
A former Ohio governor who was ousted in 2010 by current Gov John Kasich, a Republican and a presidential candidate, Strickland, 74, drove a go-cart through the parade.
State Rep. Patmon, a Democrat and former Cleveland councilman, and one, like Barnes of three Black Cleveland area state representatives in the Ohio House of Representatives, told Cleveland Urban News.Com that the turnout was indicative of "what congressman Stokes meant to the community and how well he was thought of."
Residents in general came out to support the congresswoman and to remember Stokes, and some said that attending the annual event is a family tradition.
"My children and I enjoy this event every year and look forward especially to the Labor Day parade," said Cleveland resident Keisha Davis.
Stokes led the 11th congressional district, formerly the 21st congressional district, for 15 terms, until his retirement from congress in 1998. He was the brother and only sibling of the late Carl B. Stokes, the first Black mayor of Cleveland, and of a major American city, both of them honored on Monday morning as a prelude to the parade, and by Councilman Reed, whose ward includes the Kinsman and Mount Pleasant neighborhoods.
