(7 of 10)
Certainly Stokes, with his expensively tailored, double-breasted pin-stripe suits, monogrammed (CBS) shirts and Antonio y Cleopatra cigars, is no leveler. His children go to private schools. And now that he is king of Cleveland's mountain, he can be expected to work from the top to excise the civic decay that has retarded Cleveland's progress.
After a proud and prosperous history going back to 1796, Cleveland in recent years has suffered from a malaise born of hubris and small minds. It has a sound, diversified economy and a renowned cultural establishment that theoretically should draw strength from its enclaves of ingrown, Old World-oriented ethnic communities—63 of them in all. Yet it remains a frustrated and fragmented society. Negroes, who were still being recruited from the South by the city's industry as recently as 1958, form the most recent wave of immigration. Three hundred thousand strong, they account for 38% of the population of some 800,000, which makes them the largest single distinguishable group of Clevelanders.
Industry, much of it nestling in the very heart of town along the river, has not been able to supply enough employment to bring prosperity to the ghetto. Neither city nor state government has been able to meet the slums' other needs. The poor often call their town Mistake-on-the-Lake.
Though it has designated nearly twice as much land (6,060 acres) for urban renewal as Philadelphia, the runner-up, Cleveland probably has the worst fulfillment record of any major city. Blocks have been bulldozed for grandiose, half-forgotten schemes, while their residents, mostly Negro, have been left to find new homes for themselves. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development earlier this year took the almost unheard of step of withdrawing $10 million in previously allocated renewal funds. Negro slums like Hough are as bad as any in the country, and seem ready to explode, as Hough in fact did in the summer of 1966, on any hot night.
Man with the Spark. And things have been getting worse, not better. In a statistical profile of the Negro published by the Federal Government last month, Hough mirrored the national picture: while some Negroes are absorbed into the middle class, the hard core poor grow ever poorer and more numerous. Between 1960 and 1965 in Hough, median family income decreased from $4,732 to $3,966. The percentage of families headed by women increased from 23% to 32%.
Recent mayors, though honest and reasonably competent, have lacked the spunk to meet the city's mounting problems even part way. During Locher's regime, says Thomas Vail, publisher of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "Some of the most powerful people in Cleveland were going to city hall and saying 'Let's get going. What can we do to help?' But nobody could get anywhere with Locher." In Vail's phrase, "that little extra spark" was missing.
Carl Stokes saw himself as the man with the spark two years ago when he ran as an independent candidate against Locher, his former boss. He came within 2,143 votes of winning, and did not let up between elections. This year, Stokes, with the influential support of the Plain Dealer, challenged Locher in the primary. He waged a gentlemanly campaign and mentioned race only to say that his own should not be an issue.