Black greater Clevelanders remember Congressman Louis Stokes in one-on-one interviews with Cleveland Urban News.Com, interviewed were retired judge Sara Harper, Ohio Rep. John Barnes Jr., Charles Bibb Sr, Community Activist Art McKoy, and retired judge Una H.R. Keenon, who is the president of the Black Women Political Action Committee and president of the East Cleveland Board of Education....Stokes revived the Veterans Hospital from a second class medical facility says McKoy....Kennon said that Stokes helped other Blacks and women get elected to office....Harper said that Stokes fought all of his political life to protect the right to vote....Stokes was a member of the Old Black Political Guard....This is the second article of a three-part series on the legendary Louis Stokes, Ohio's first Black congressman, by Cleveland Urban News.Com Editor-in-Chief Kathy Wray Coleman
Democratic Congressman Louis Stokes, the first Black in Congress from Ohio who served 30 years in the U.S. House of Representatives before retiring in 1998. The longtime federal lawmaker died on August 18, 2015 at his home in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb. Pictured are retired Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals judge Sara J. Harper, also the third vice president of the Cleveland NAACP (wearing eyeglasses), retired East Cleveland Judge Una H.R. Kennon, the chairman of the Black Women Political Action Committee of greater Cleveland and president of the East Cleveland Board of Education (wearing turtle-neck sweater), state Rep. John Barnes Jr. (D-12), (wearing purple tie), Community Activist Art McKoy (wearing turban), and Charles E. Bibb Sr., a former East Cleveland councilman and current president of the Carnegie Roundtable of greater Cleveland (wearing grey-striped tie) By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, Cleveland Urban News. Com and the Cleveland Ur