The Gentleman from Ohio

by Louis Stokes, David Chanoff, John Lewis (Foreword)

Louis Stokes was a giant in Ohio politics and one of the most significant figures in the U.S. Congress in recent times. When he arrived in the House of Representatives as a freshman in 1969, there were only six African Americans serving. By the time he retired thirty years later, he had chaired the House Special Committee on the Kennedy and King assassinations, the House Ethics Committee during Abscam, and the House Intelligence Committee during Iran-Contra; he was also a senior member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee.
 
Prior to Louis Stokes’s tenure in Congress he served for many years as a criminal defense lawyer and chairman of the Cleveland NAACP Legal Redress Committee. Among the Supreme Court Cases he argued, the Terry “Stop and Frisk” case is regarded as one of the twenty-five most significant cases in the court’s history. The Gentleman from Ohio chronicles this and other momentous events in the life and legacy of Ohio’s first black representative—a man who, whether in law or politics, continually fought for the principles he believed in and helped lead the way for African Americans in the world of mainstream American politics.
 

Genres: Nonfiction

277 pages, Hardcover

Published August 31, 2016

Reviews

[Chad Malkamaki · Rating 5 out of 5]

With his younger brother Carl, the Stokes brothers helped shape not just Cleveland, but late 20th century national history. From the EPA, serving as chair of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, ABSCAM, Iran-Contra, being a Congressional Cardinal, and shaping legislation that promoted healthcare, education and housing, Louis Stokes truly was the Gentleman from Ohio.

If that wasn't enough, a distinguished law career mainly working for Civil Rights, defending parents that protested the segregated Cleveland schools, he was also a was a popular defense lawyer even defending a case before the U.S. Supreme court, that remains one of the most important decisions that govern police rights and the rights of the person being searched.

This autobiography that was finished before Congressman Stokes passed from a brain tumor chronicles his early life growing up in the projects of Cleveland to his service in the segregated army of WWII where he witnessed Southern Jim Crow practices for the first time. His younger brother Carl would go on to be the first African American mayor of a major American city, and Louis would become the first African American Congressman from Ohio.

I have had the fortune of working on two exhibitions on the lives of these two amazing men, the story of their strong single mother that ensured they received an education to help them become someone, and was able to meet the Congressman on multiple occasions. It was a pleasure to read a book that he had been putting off for a long time, and perfect companion to his brothers Promises of Power: A Political Autobiography.

[Cara Byrne · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I fixed on my mother's face for a moment. She seemed to be glowing with pride. She had started her life as a Georgia sharecropper and here she was at age seventy-three with one son Cleveland's first black mayor and the other Ohio's first black congressman. What that must have meant to her. I was struck by how beautiful she was, despite the hard life she had lived, from the cotton fields to the projects, scrubbing other people's floors, doing their laundry, caring for their children - and now to Washington, D.C. What a journey. Only in America" (100). In his autobiography, Louis Stokes, who is such an important politician not only in Ohio but in the nation, details his lengthy career as a lawyer and congressman. While it's difficult not to compare this autobiography to his brother's Carl Stokes' _The Promise of Power_, which is one of the most fiery and compelling politician autobiographies I've ever read, I'm trying my best not to as _The Gentleman from Ohio_ is a very different autobiography - one written not in the heart of one's career but years later, finished just months before Louis passed at the age of 90.

[John Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspirational American story of a true gentleman who grew up in the Cleveland projects with a loving widowed mother and a charismatic brother who later became the first African American mayor of a big city in America; Lou later became the first American American member of congress from Ohio.

Yet this book is not about politics. It's about race.

And on so many levels.

While I read it before our nation had the recent demonstrations and discussions on race in America, this book should be on everyone's reading list that cares about justice. The Congressman's promotion of apprentices in government still make a difference today in agencies like NASA that were way too largely white for way too long.

This book shows we made incredible progress with racial justice but we certainly have much further to go with Americans, Asians, Latinos, and others. Many of Congressman Stokes' approaches could still work today.

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Describes growing up in 20th century Cleveland and how his life and that of his brother Carl intertwined. Each served the area amidst local and national racist politics. Louis Stokes give insight into the machinations of life as a public servant.