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4 Strange Bedfellows
On Monday, January 2, 1963, I made history and began what would be a series of changes in the Ohio House of Representatives, as I took the oath of office as the first black Democrat ever to be elected to the House or Senate of the state of Ohio. It was one of the few times in public that I ever saw tears in my mother's eyes. She stood in the balcony with my brother, Louis, Blanche Bolden, Al Sweeny and a host of those from Cleveland who had helped make it possible. The system had worked. Traditional ethnic-coalition politics had proven it was as viable in 1962 for a black man who understood it as it had been for two hundred years for Irish, Germans, Italians, Jews, Poles, and other ethnic groups. In the May 1962 primary election I had ranked ninth of seventeen candidates to be nominated out of a field of over a hundred aspirants. In the November general election, I ran twelfth of seventeen to be elected, and my 291,782 votes exceeded those of some of Cuyahoga County's most prestigious political names. In a county only eleven percent black, I had received a majority of white votes. All my planning, analyses, projections, and the hard work by myself and so many others had won victory. Now elected victory
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had to be translated into legislative achievement. That, I was to learn, was a whole new ball game. I was now in the major league of Ohio politics. Most of the political leaders in Ohio -- congressmen, senators and governors -- started in the state House of Representatives, whereas the state Senate seems to be more of a stopping-off place for men whose ambitions are not clear. For me, the tedious grinding pace and the oppressive conservatism in the lower house eventually became overpowering but for the first few years I felt I was actually accomplishing something. I saw important issues raised and decided, and found some men who were serious, intelligent, committed and honest. Sadly, most of those men were not in my own delegation from Cuyahoga County. The men elected from my area refer to the legislators from the downstate areas almost contemptuously as the hayseed members of the "cornstalk brigade." But if a hayseed is a thick-headed man who can't think beyond his own narrow concerns, then it was the Democratic contingent from Cleveland, not the rural Republicans and Democrats, who were hayseeds. With the exception of the two or three of the seventeen Cuyahoga legislators, when detailed, knowledgeable debates on the budget occurred, it was the down-state, small-city legislators who were the best informed. Ohio has a national image of being composed of small, typically Midwestern towns, or at least typically Midwestern people. Yet is has eight large cities, more than any other state in the Union. Most of it's ten million people live in those cities. Less than ten percent of the people are farmers. Yet of its eighty-eight counties, half are still dry, these things mattered in the legislature, where each county, no matter how sparsely populated, was entitled to at least one representative in the House of Representatives. I was elected to a legislature in which Republicans outnumbered Democrats five to two and whites outnumbered blacks 184 to two. David Albritton, a black Republican from Dayton, a former track star who had been a co-hero with Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics, had already been serving when I was elected.
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As the first black Democrat, I knew I was going to be watched. I couldn't afford to make any wrong moves. The only thing I had going for me was integrity. In a body like the legislature, where so many issues on so many fronts are thrown at a man that he can't possibly be knowledgeable on all of them, personal integrity is the one virtue that stands out. Nobody can claim universal competence. You quickly find that you have to depend on other men whose knowledge in special fields is superior to your own. If you can't trust them, what are you going to do? I had to be a man who could be depended on, could be trusted. I worked hard at learning the structure of the legislature and learning the men who made it work. I didn't go to the lobbyists' parties and I didn't let them buy my dinner, and never accepted a favor from a lobbyist that could compromise my position on some future vote. The men I worked with in Columbus understood what I was doing, and I soon developed a reputation as a legislator who did his homework and intended to stay clean of the special interest people. In any legislative body, when a controversial vote is taken just about everybody knows how it will come out. This means that the party leaders on the floor will have canvassed all the legislators and will know within a vote or two how an issue is faring even before it reaches the floor. I also means that when you are asked how you stand on an issue, you have to be forthright, you can't be changing your mind. My colleagues never could predict in advance how I would stand on any particular issue -- I took some positions that were pretty unorthodox by traditional standards; but when they asked how I would vote, I told them straight and kept my word. My interests in the legislature naturally centered on the issues that concerned the people who had elected me -- welfare, housing, civil rights, education and mental health. And my concern quite as naturally brought me into conflict with the state administration of Republican Governor James A. Rhodes, whose main policy was to keep taxes down to seduce business and industry. With slogans like "Profit is not a dirty word in Ohio," and actions like ten percent across-the-board budget cuts in the social-welfare
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programs when the state's participation in those areas was already grievously low, Rhodes naturally became my target. Because of my position as the first black Democratic ever elected, I was in demand as a speaker. All around the state I would speak to groups, castigating Rhodes, articulating the social blindness of his actions, and itemizing the failures of the Republican majority in the legislature. These speeches were usually reported in the local newspapers. When the legislature adjourned during my first session, I had done what few freshman legislators accomplish. I had gotten legislation passed under my own name, and had developed a position as an articulate liberal of integrity who could debate the substantive issues on the floor. I was ready for a comeuppance. My pet legislation was a bill that guaranteed a person under arrest the immediate right to see a lawyer. That this right was not already in the Ohio Code was in some respects inadvertent. I was determined to see it spelled out, though; the issue was too basic and important to just assume, I laid all the proper groundwork, presented the bill on the floor as persuasively as I could, and got it passed. A major and important victory. A couple of weeks after adjournment, I got a call from John McElroy, the governor's aide. "Carl," he said, "I'm calling you to tell you that the governor had vetoed one of your bills." "He can't do that," I said. "Oh, yes, he said, "the governor can veto." "What I mean is, I said, flabbergasted, "that this bill is just too vital. He can't have any grounds for a veto." McElroy gave me some ambiguous talk about how my bill might be in conflict with a provision in another law. I knew he wasn't leveling with me, and I wanted to find out why. I told him I wanted to talk to the governor about it. He said come ahead. Jim Rhodes is a consummate politician of what we call the old school He is out of that same mold that produced the Lyndon Johnson and Richard Daleys. He stands over six feet tall
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and looks like a football player turned mortician. His gray hair is combed up in a small pompadour and then swept back. Although his clothes style has changed now, back in the 1960's he wore almost a uniform -- blue suit, blue shirt, blue tie. He must have had a dozen suits, all the same cost and color. Yet somehow on him it didn't look as plain as it sounds. He managed to look natty. Rhodes never went beyond high school, but nobody ever questioned his expertise. And he understood power. He was mayor of Columbus at the crucial time of suburban expansion for that city, the 1940s. unlike the mayors of Cleveland, who couldn't see beyond their own reelections, Rhodes saw that the suburbs had to be forced to incorporate as part of Columbus if the central city was to survive. Whenever a newly developed area decided it wanted water lines, Rhodes laid down his hard line. The suburb either submitted to annexation or it got no water. As a result, Columbus today has the largest land area of any city in the state. Had the same policy been followed in Cleveland, our city would not have been strangled economically by the surrounding suburbs who paid low sewer and water rates for Cleveland water and used the availability of cheap water to attract industry and business from Cleveland. After Rhode's mayorship, he was elected state auditor, and used his office to embarrass and subsequently defeat the Democratic governor, Michael V. Di Salle. Jim Rhodes lives politics. Until he vetoed my prisoner bill, I had never talked at length with Rhodes. I drove down to Columbus. When I walked into the governor's office, Rhodes was sitting in his shirtsleeves. He stood up and put out his hand, giving me his usual hearty welcome. "Hi, Carl, good to see you. How's the legislator from Cleveland?" "Fine, Governor," I said, "I came down to see why you vetoed my bill." He sat down and grinned at me. "You understand that, don't you?" "No, Governor, I don't"
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"John, he called out to McElroy, "go get Carl's file." McElroy came in with a folder full of newspaper clippings. Rhodes sat there and rattled off the headlines: STOKES ASSAILS RHODES; STOKES SLAMS RHODES ON EDUCATION; STOKES SAYS RHODES PROGRAMS RUINING THE STATE. The list went on and on. "There it is, Carl, You know, you've been giving me hell all over this state. And you never heard me say anything, did you?" "No Governor, I never did." I replied. "Well, now it's my turn," he said, "I've been laying in the weeds for you." My political education took a great leap forward. When the legislature resumed its session the next spring, the Republican governor and the second-term black Democrat from Cleveland began to find areas they could agree upon. And when the legislator gave speeches, he was much more, shall we say, issue-oriented. He attacked the terrible problems that existed in Ohio. He did not descend to petty name calling, or even name mentioning. There were, of course, more important reasons why on occasion I found myself siding with the Republican rather than the Democrats. The more important of those occasions arose in late 1964, immediately after I had been reelected to my second term. The United States Supreme Court had made its first one-man, one-vote ruling, which overthrew and amendment to the Ohio constitution that guaranteed each county representation in the legislature whether or not it had sufficient population to warrant it. Rhodes immediately drew up a plan that involved mapping out each legislative district within the already defined congressional districts. This would end the bedsheet ballot in populous counties like my own. Liberals and good-government groups had advocated this for a long time. But Rhodes had built into his plan a way for the Republican legislature to gerrymander the districts, perpetuating the dominance of the rural areas. The Ohio Democrat is a city creature, he doesn't even know what rutabaga looks like. When the implications of Rhodes's redistricting plan became clear, the Democrats were outraged. From my point of view, the Rhodes plan had at least one good
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thing going for it. More black legislators would be elected. I had won a second term handily, but I was still the only black Democrat elected, and I knew that as long as members of the lower house were elected countywide I was likely to stay the only one. Under Rhode's plan, at least three blacks would be elected from Cuyahoga County alone, and there would no doubt be others from the other large cities. When the issue came up in the Democratic caucus, I stood up for it. This caused a panic within the party, since each vote was crucial. The reapportionment plan had to pass the legislature by a two-thirds vote, and the Democrats had just barely enough votes to block it. But one or two defections could change everything. Just before the issue came up on the floor, both Rhodes and Speaker of the House Roger Cloud asked me if I would support the bill and I said I would. The bill was brought forth. The vote was in progress when suddenly it was stopped. There was a phone call for me. The Democrats had arranged to have Bert Porter call at the last minute; the Republican leadership had agreed to hold the vote while he made a last-minute attempt to change my mind for me. Albert S. Porter, the county engineer, who had taken over as county boss of the party after Ray Miller dies earlier that year, was an autocratic and stern leader. As county engineer he controlled more patronage jobs than any other public official in the county, and that gave him at least an apparent clout that was seldom challenged. Except by me. When he called this time, I doubted that it occurred to him he had no club to wield. He told me that he had heard I was going to vote with the Republicans on the reapportionment bill. I said, "That's right, Bert." "I'm calling to ask you to change your mind," he said, "You're a young fellow and I think you have a bright career ahead of you with the Democratic Party. You're the first Negro Democrat to serve in the legislature from Cuyahoga County." "No, Bert," I said. "from anywhere in the state." "Well, yes, and that makes it more significant. What I want to do is see to it that you don't hurt that career."
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"I don't see how I could hurt my career, Bert. As I see it, I get elected because I went out and put votes together that had not been put together by anyone before, and you didn't have anything to do with that. And in addition, I haven't seen the Democratic Party electing any blacks around the rest of the state. Under this plan, black legislators will be elected." "I want you to know that our party doesn't turn on black and white. We're Democrats." A fine old street verb came to my mind when he said that, but I held my tongue. I asked him if he had anything else to say. "Yes," he said, "I want to caution you that this is such an important vote to the Democratic party that I would doubt very much that you'd be a welcome member of the party if you insist on voting this way." "Bert, they're waiting for me on the floor. I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going right out there and vote with those republicans just like I was going to do before you called. Thank you. Goodbye." When I went back to the floor, the Republican leadership approached me and told me they would have the votes, and that I could change my vote if I wanted to patch things up with my party. I told them I wanted my vote to stand. So the bill passed by one more vote than it needed. The coalition between me and the Republicans paid off. I put through a strong fair-housing law; reform of the state welfare system; a law giving a person the right to designate that his organs be used after his death to save another's life; and major revision and reform of the state's approach to financing and staffing of mental health facilities. I learned how to function in the legislature in my own way during my first term and during the first few months of my second term. But after that point, my positions on issues often coincided with my political ambitions, which lay elsewhere. By the spring of 1965, I had begun to see that I had a fighting chance to run for mayor. I did run and nearly took the prize the first time. When I was reelected to the legislature in 1966, I had my
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eye continually on two possibilities, running for theU.S. Congress or running again for mayor. In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Ohio's congressional districts would have to be redrawn, along with the state legislative districts. Cuyahoga County's four U.S. representatives -- two Democrats and two Republicans -- were all veterans, wielding considerable seniority, and therefore power. It happened that most of the black community, because of the segregated housing pattern, lived within the boundaries of the Twenty-first Congressional District, represented by Charles A. Vanik, A Democrat, a Czech and a sometime liberal. Michael A Feighan, representing the twenty-second District, was the other Democrat. The Twentieth District, which included the old-guard suburbs of Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights, was represented by a rock-ribbed Republican, Francis M. Bolton. The other Republican, representing the remaining republican suburbs, was William E. Minshall. The legal authority to set the lines of the new districts lay with the state legislature, but in fact the drawing of the lines was put into the hands of local party leaders to work out. The leaders of both parties in Cuyahoga County agreed that they wanted to keep their incumbents. The most threatened was Vanik, a long-time congressmen who had good relations with the black community he represented, but would obviously soon face strong opposition from a black candidate. Bert Porter handled this situation by carving the black ghetto in half, giving Vanik some and Feighan most of the rest. The blacks were in a minority in both districts, therefore, and unable to elect their own man in either. The party leaders and the political writers at the white daily newspapers explained that this plan would benefit Negroes, giving them influence in two districts rather than one. This is the kind of influence we had for a hundred years. Those whites were happy to segregate us for their purposes, but when the segregation happened to become a political benefit for our purposes, it became wrong. They proceeded with their plans to redraw the district lines and politically integrate the blacks, while
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leaving them residentially segregated and politically impotent. I pleaded our case with Bert Porter, but it was a waste of time. The plan was submitted to the legislature. When it reached committee I formed a contingent of black leaders and white liberals and made another presentation to get the lines redrawn. The redistricting plan passed over our objection. I pulled the NAACP lawyers together and we filed suit in federal court, charging that the redistricting violated the equal protection fo the laws and the one-man, one-vote principle. The suit was filed in 1965. The U.S. district court ruled against us in 1966, and in the congressional election that year all the white incumbents were reelected. Comes 1967, another mayoral election year. Ralph S. Locher, the incumbent, is being roasted by the media. I think I can beat him. But what I would really like to do is get those congressional lines changed and run for Congress in 1968. The NAACP suit has been lying in the U.S. Court of Appeals for nearly a year. It is summer, and the deadline for filing petitions for mayor is fast approaching. I heard that the court had made its decision. Unfortunately, a Plain Dealer reporter, James M. Naughton, claimed a reliable source told him what the major decision would be and he ran a front-page story in the Sunday paper claiming the decision supported the NAACP position. I would have my district. I could sit out the mayoral race. But I didn't count on judicial vagary -- or reportorial inaccuracy. When the decision was announced on Monday, it went the other way, two to one against the NAACP position. We appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Three weeks after I was elected mayor, the court overruled the appellate decision. Victory was ours. The lines would have to be redrawn. A few days later I was in Columbus and met with Governor Rhodes. We discussed the decision of the court and he said, "We'll bring out your congressional district, Carl." It was my district. I had fought for it. Now three black Democratic councilmen lined up to run for it -- George Forbes. Leo A. Jackson, and George White. They hadn't supported me in my
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fight against the party to create a district a black could win in, and I'd be damned before I'd let them reap the benefit. I ran my brother Louis -- who had been one of the lawyers who argued the case -- and put behind him all the machinery which had just elected me as mayor. In the May 1968 primaries he soundly defeated all three of them -- soundly thrashing them in their home precincts. In the November general election he defeated the Republican candidate and became the first black congressman ever to be elected from Ohio. Now in his third term, Louis is Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee, and a nationally recognized political leader. My last shot as a maverick in the legislature came in the spring of 1967, when Jim Rhodes called me to his office to ask me to support his pet project, the Ohio Bond Commission. The commission, whose creation would have to be submitted to the Ohio voters for approval, would sell bonds to pay for all sort of projects and services that are normally paid for with tax monies. Rhodes had promised no new taxes, and the Bond Commission scheme would bring in $1.7 billion without taxes. The commission also happened to be a gigantic Republican pork barrel. The plan, once it was presented, was immediately denounced bitterly by organized labor and the Democratic Party. Instead of using actual income from taxes for essential services, the commission plan would have committed the state to extraordinary debt in the future. Rhodes appealed to me on the basis of what could be done through the commission. He pointed out that without new taxes there were not about to be any major improvements in spending for education, housing, health and welfare needs. I stood up in the Democratic caucus and said that unless the Democrats could come up with an alternative that would get these things done, I had no choice but to go with a proposal that at least benefited heavily for the plan -- both Cleveland dailies gave it a fervent editorial support -- and the entire business community, which saw it
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as and endless source of goodies and gratuities, was for it. I remember one terrific editorial in the Press that included my picture, along with three others, next to a text headed "Four Courageous Men." I already knew I would be running for mayor against the party's incumbent and couldn't expect their or labor's support. Further, I didn't see Cleveland or Ohio organized labor as any great friend of the black man. Two years later, the Ohio AFL-CIO was still bitterly opposing a graduated state income tax. Why? Because union members are now middle-class and no longer are dependent on public-assistance programs financed from taxes. In any case, my stand was morally and practically right and had benefits in goodwill with the newspapers and business interest and didn't hurt anyone else. When the votes were counted in May, the Ohio voters expressed their own opinion and defeated the commission issue two to one.
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