By Kathy Wray Coleman, Associate Publisher, Editor, Cleveland Urban News.Com and the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com
AKON, Ohio- President Barack Obama (pictured) will visit Akron, Oh. on Wednesday where NBA great LeBron James (pictured) is a native, a city some 35 miles south of Cleveland that has a Black residential section with constituents that are now part of Congresswoman Marcia Fudge's 11th congressional district.
He will also make a stop in Mansfield, Oh. as part of his campaign tour.
Obama for America campaign officials did not say in a press release to Cleveland Urban News.Com on the upcoming visit whether James will join the president in Akron, though the basketball star did campaign for Obama in 2008, the year he won election as America's first Black president.
The president comes to the Cleveland area for a third time this summer.
He visited the Cleveland suburb of Parma earlier this month and spoke at a campaign event at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland in June.
He visited Cincinnati a week and a half ago as Ohio remains a pivotal state where no modern day Republican has won the White house without first winning it, and the last Democrat to do so was the late John F. Kennedy.
Campaign officials said that the president will attend a few campaign events in Mansfiled and Akron and did not say at publishing time if he will appear at events open to the public, though he will greet the media when his plane lands at the Akron-Canton Airport at 3 pm.
Akron is a largely White city of about 200,000 people and is roughly 32 percent Black.
A small Black pocket of the city and staggering parts of its Summit County suburbs joined parts of Cuyahoga County, which contains Cleveland, to become part of Fudge's 11th congressional district , after the Ohio State legislature last year devised a new congressional map and reduced the state's 18 congressional district's to 16 due to a declining statewide population.
Fudge, a Democrat like Obama and the only Black congressperson in the nearby states of Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio, also represents Cleveland's majority Black east side, and its eastern suburbs.
James was drafted in the first round and was Cleveland's favorite son until he left two year's ago to join fellow ball players James Wade and Chris Bosh and the Miami Heat in Miami, FL.
Last month he led the Heat to its second NBA championship with his team beating the Oklahoma Thunder 121-106 in the fifth game of the series finals.
His departure from Cleveland became so hostile at one point that the Rev Jesse Jackson, a former presidential candidate and renowned and longtime Civil Rights leader, stepped in to urge Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert to tone down his criticism of the mega star, who said when he left Cleveland that Gilbert does not "respect him as a Black man."
James took criticism too with some Blacks saying that he left the impoverished and largely Black major metropolitan city to take his resources to the overwhelmingly White Miami.
Reach Cleveland Urban News.Com by email at editor@clevelandurbannews.com and by telephone at 216-659-0473.
