Pictured are former 11th Congressional District Congressman Louis Stokes (in red tie), and Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, the democratic candidate for Ohio governor
By former Congressman Louis Stokes, a Shaker Heights, Ohio Democrat and former senior counsel with the Squire, Sanders and Dempsey law firm who led the 11th congressional district, which is now led by Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge, a Warrensville Heights Democrat and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus of Blacks in Congress. Congressman Stokes addresses below efforts to steal the Black vote in Ohio via voter suppression bills signed into law this year by Republican Governor John Kasich. The new state laws limit early voting, among other strategies to intimidate Black, elderly and low-income voters, Click here to join the fight for voting rights in Ohio. That fight is also being taken up by Democratic candidate for governor Ed FitzGerald, the Cuyahoga County executive. Cuyahoga County is the state's largest of 88 counties and includes the largely Blacks cities of Cleveland and East Cleveland. It is roughly 29 percent Black. Congresswoman Fudge , state Sen. Nina Turner (D-25), the Cleveland NAACP, the United Pastor's in Mission of greater Cleveland and others that oppose the voter suppression laws and a Plain Dealer Newspaper editorial called them anti-Black and against low-income people. CLICK THIS LINK HERE TO GO TO THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER AT CLEVELAND.COM TO READ THE EDITORIAL
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By Former Congressman Louis Stokes, Ohio's First Black Congressperson
CLEVELAND, Ohio-I was raised in the first housing projects in Cleveland, and went on to serve our country in WWII, and then as the first African American elected to Congress from Ohio. I was afforded those opportunities because my mother had left the south years earlier in search of a better life, and found it as a domestic worker making $8 a day.
We both witnessed the punishing struggle for equal rights, but I have lived the political and economic mobility of its success. Neither would have been possible without Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who I first met in 1965. He was traveling around Cleveland registering voters from the back of a flatbed truck. He’d say that we must vote, because Southern blacks could not. And fresh in our minds was the memory of the three boys killed for registering voters in Mississippi the year before.So we registered voters, and we voted ourselves – and eventually, America passed the Voting Rights Act.
Ever since, Dr. King’s long walk has resulted in expanded access to the ballot box and empowered citizens with a say in their future. That’s how each generation has bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice.Governor Kasich is restricting the vote – and the ability of Ohio’s citizens to make their voices heard. Once again, we need to make our voices heard. Join me and Ed [Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, the Democratic candidate this year for governor] and tell Governor Kasich that the right to vote deserves to be protected, not restricted.
In 2012, 59,000 Ohioans voted during the Golden Week [early voting] that Governor Kasich is eliminating, and 1.3 million voted absentee. With the swipe of Kasich’s pen, those absentee votes now face an uncertain and unnecessary hurdle.
Ohio’s Republican leaders are unraveling decades of progress expanding the vote. Stand with me – and Ed and let’s fight to ensure every Ohioan has the right to vote without restriction.
By Louis Stokes, former congressman of the 11th congressional district
