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50 confronting the odds chapter four Black Economic and Political Development in the Contemporary Period, 1960–2008 The 1960s was one of the most memorable decades of the twentieth century. Several important laws were passed that provided better opportunities for disenfranchised Americans. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, for example, gave the Office of the Attorney General the right to guarantee that the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment was actually being enforced. Titles II and III of the 1964 law also gave the attorney general’s office the right to implement Brown v. the Board of Education (1954), which prohibited segregation in public educational institutions and facilities.1 Executive Order 11246 (1965) gave the federal government the authority to challenge employment discrimination. This order, and its amendments, required recipients of federal contracts for more than fifty thousand dollars to develop affirmative action plans. Recipients also had to agree not to discriminate in employment and to utilize affirmative action principles in recruiting and hiring minorities and women.2 As political and economic opportunities increased for minorities, women, and the disabled, an increasing number of African American men and women entered the world of politics. Carl Stokes, elected as the first African American mayor in a major American city in 1967, was a representative of this new group. Stokes was also the first African American Democrat in Cleveland to win a seat in the Ohio legislature. His election as mayor was precipitated by a large mobilization of the black vote at the grassroots level of society.3 According to William Nelson, Jr., “Stokes viewed the outcome of the 1967 mayoral contest not as a personal victory but as a mandate fundamentally to alter the subordinate social, economic, and political posture of the black community. A native of Cleveland, Carl Stokes had been an active participant in the militant struggle for social justice waged in the city by civil rights activists in the 1960s. He represented a new breed of politician, consumed with visions of racial progress and committed to the proposition that creative social change could be achieved through the direct involvement of black administrators in local public policy making.”4 50 Black Economic and Political Development, 1960–2007 51 While interpreting his victory as an important step in his quest to develop permanent influence and power for the African American community in Cleveland, Stokes was also mindful of the need to establish a stable political organization that would be useful in putting his social reform agenda in place. This goal was accomplished in large measure during his first term by bringing together black democratic politicians in a separate black caucus unit, which was called the Twenty-First District Democratic Caucus (TFDDC). To some extent, the development of the TFDDC provided an avenue through which Stokes and his followers could enhance the level of black influence in the Democratic Party. The refusal by the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party to allow this caucus to be involved in the selection of political candidates was reflective of the unease with which the new organization was greeted. In response to this, the members of the newly formed TFDDC pulled out of the Democratic Party as a group in order to develop their own organization.5 Eventually, the TFDDC became a very powerful political organization, similar toapoliticalparty.Theorganizationusedveryformalrulesthatincludedscreening and selecting candidates beyond party lines as well as putting forward an independent list of candidates for office. In this way, the caucus exercised influence over the black vote whether it was in the city, county, or congressional elections in the Twenty-first Congressional District. The caucus made important contributions in Cleveland’s political development as it elected candidates from its slate to serve in public office while simultaneously soliciting black support for candidates from both the Democratic and Republican parties.6 To quote William Nelson, Jr., “The consolidation of political power in the office of the mayor, undergirded by the electoral strength of an independent black-controlled political machine, dramatically altered power relations between black and white communities in Cleveland. The existence of a cohesive political party base extending beyond the office of mayor opened the door to the prospect that black political control would become institutionalized in Cleveland. Through shrewd bargaining and careful political organizing, leaders of the caucus would be in a position to wring major concessions from both of the regular political parties.”7 There is no doubt that Carl Stokes’s election as mayor served as a catalyst for the involvement of other African Americans...

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