The Politics Of Carl Stokes

In November of 1967, Carl Stokes made history. He was the first black mayor to ever be elected to a major United States city. He accomplished this goal in Cleveland, a city that at the time was made up of 65% white citizens. Racial tensions in urban areas had reached their breaking point following riots in cities such as Detroit. Cleveland was even coming off its own riot from the summer of 1966. It was a time of changing ideologies. Power was being sought in new ways. For Carl Stokes, the way to this power was through the election. First, Stokes had to win the democratic primary. He was running against the incumbent mayor, Ralph Locher. Stokes had lost to Locher in the 1965 campaign. To win this time, he would need the support of the city’s

Black Clevelanders voted in record numbers to propel Stokes to a victory over Ralph Locher. However, the celebration was short-lived. Although Cleveland was made up of 80% democrats, winning the general election was far from easy for Stokes. Many democrats changed their political affiliation after the primary and began campaigning for the republican mayoral candidate, Seth Taft. The Stokes campaign also ran into a problem when they realized how uneducated their new voters were about elections in general. Many of those who supported Stokes in the primary did not realize that they had to vote for him again in the general election. This lead to campaign members having to reach out again to the same voters to convince them to go back to the polls on November 7th to vote Stokes into the position of mayor. (Eyes on the Prize ep.

In the past, leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. had traveled from city to city helping to foster victories. In Cleveland however, Stokes openly disapproved of King’s being there and even asked him to leave. Stokes, himself, saw this as a bold move, but he knew that he had to run this election his own way, without the help, or perhaps accidental hinderance, of King. This is representative of a larger growing feeling that King’s tactics were not as successful as they once were. For one, he was no longer in small cities throughout the South. His stances were also growing tiresome for many black Americans. They wanted more action and less passive protests. For Stokes, this was an opportunity to turn out the vote, but he needed to do it