Abstract
Richard Peery was raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is a retired journalist and lived in Cleveland for 40 years while working at the Call and Post and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. This 2017 interview was collected as part of a yearlong, community-wide commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Carl Stokes' election as mayor of Cleveland.
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Interviewee
Peery, Richard (interviewee)
Interviewer
Perry, Dee (interviewer); Hickey, Christine (participant)
Project
Stokes: Honoring the Past, Inspiring the Future
Date
5-5-2017
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
94 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Richard Peery interview, 05 May 2017" (2017). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 501017.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1206
Transcript
Dee Perry [00:00:04] We're here at the Tri-C Metro Campus Library on Friday, May 5, 2017 with Richard Peery. And we're going to do a conversation about the Stokes Commemoration or for the Stokes Commemoration Project. And Richard is R,I,C,H,A,R,D. Peery, P,E,E,R,Y. And Dick, it's good to see you.
Richard Peery [00:00:29] Hey. Well, thank you for talking to me. I appreciate it.
Dee Perry [00:00:34] I want to start with having you talk about the first time you met Carl Stokes. I believe it was in 1952.
Richard Peery [00:00:44] Well, it was maybe about '53 or '54. I was about 19 years old and I was taking some courses at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where I grew up. And Carl was attending the law school at the University of Minnesota. He was, of course, a World War II veteran. I was much younger than he was, but we met each other casually. And then some of my older brothers met him and they became good friends, older brothers also being veterans. And so Carl came by our house a few times and sat in the living room and talked. He was obviously a different kind of young student. There weren't many people, there wasn't anybody else like Carl Stokes on the campus that we knew. A very bright young Black man who had a really worldly view of what's going on. And I think he liked to hang out at our house because with my older brothers, he could talk about things beyond just what was happening on the local political scene or something. So I knew him casually and I didn't know him well, but yeah, I was well aware of him. Everybody was aware of him
Dee Perry [00:02:02] Did you have any one on one conversations with him during that period of time talking about what both of your dreams or plans were?
Richard Peery [00:02:12] No, no, I never heard him talk about where he was going. He was going to law school. He was going to be a lawyer. I never heard him say, I'm going to be the most successful politician in history up till now or something.
Dee Perry [00:02:27] I am curious about the community in which you grew up. I don't know that I've heard there was much of a Black community in Minneapolis St. Paul. What attracted your family to that area?
Richard Peery [00:02:40] You're right. The Black community was very small. I think back in the 1940 census, there were about 7,000 black people living in the city of Minneapolis. So there were small Black neighborhoods. My father was a railway mail clerk in Missouri and he wanted to move north when he started a family. So he got a transfer up to Minnesota. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how he looked at it, he was assigned to a couple of small towns. He in Minnesota And I was born, for instance, in Wabasha, which has about 2,500 people and best known as the scene of the movie. Was it about the Old Men, The Jack Lemmon movie? Walter Matthau, Grumpy Old Men, yeah, that was filmed there. It's that kind of place. But eventually my father was able to get to the city, get reassigned to Minneapolis, and that's where I spent almost all my childhood. I was about two years old when we moved there.
Dee Perry [00:03:57] You said that Carl Stokes visited your family's house on a couple of occasions. How did he come across in social situations at that point in time?
Richard Peery [00:04:07] He was a very dynamic, attractive, charismatic guy. I mean, people, when he walked in a room, people wanted pay attention to him. I mean, he was Carl Stokes. He was a kind of a unique personality.
Dee Perry [00:04:26] Carl had family ties here in Cleveland, so he had an obvious reason to move back here after the University of Minnesota. What brought you to Cleveland?
Richard Peery [00:04:38] In the late 50s, one of my older brothers moved here for a time. He asked me to come visit him, and I came. I wound up staying. I wound up, actually, I found a job while I was here by accident, and I guess the rest was history by the time I figured I would leave. I never knew I was going to stay here. But eventually I had a whole network of connections. I was working, and next thing I knew, I had a wife and eventually children, and, hey, I'm still here.
Dee Perry [00:05:14] When you were at the University of Minnesota, what were you studying?
Richard Peery [00:05:18] I studied a general liberal arts curriculum. I didn't finish there. I left Minnesota, so I didn't go very far at the university before I left.
Dee Perry [00:05:31] Yeah, I was curious where the journalism piece came in.
Richard Peery [00:05:35] The journalism. Actually, I started in journalism as working on a high school newspaper, which I don't know if they exist anymore very much, but that was really my beginning. I loved it. That was my favorite extracurricular activity. And that's why I feel so, so sorry for these kids who don't have extracurriculars anymore. I know there were days when I was sick and didn't want to go to school, but it was deadline, and I dragged myself out of bed. And I'm sorry they've taken those kinds of incentives away from young people. But I love the work I did not study. I did not pursue a career in journalism because I. For some reason, I didn't have those plans in mind. I wasn't clear that that's what I wanted to do. And I actually, since you asked, I worked on real jobs where I punched a time clock off and on from the time I was 13. And then when I. After doing that for 20 years, I knew I just didn't want to work anymore. I went to the Call and Post and asked for a job, and they said, we don't have an opening. So I kept going back every week, and one week I walked in, they had an opening, and that's what I did for the next 40 years.
Dee Perry [00:07:00] And at the time that they said yes to you, the Call and Post, that was a fertile time in terms of politics. But I wanted to back up a bit, little, Little bit before we get to that point, Because Carl stokes was making some moves in the early 60s into the Ohio legislature. He had become a lawyer, but he decided politics was his path. Did you know about him when he got into the ohio legislature?
Richard Peery [00:07:30] Well, yes, actually Carl ran for the State Senate in 1958 and ran surprisingly well, although he didn't have a chance to win at that time. They had what they called the bedsheet ballot. Legislators were elected from counties, not from districts. And the result was that you voted for everybody, ran at large in the county where you lived. And so there were a lot of names on the ballot. And about the only way you could win was to be endorsed by a political party. The democrats didn't endorse anybody, and the republicans occasionally did, but the chance of running as an outsider was almost nil. So he ran for the senate to see how it would work. And then he later ran for the house. And when he finally won in- Well, I think he ran- I believe I got this history right. He ran in 1960, I believe, for the house and almost won. And that let the party know that they've got this elephant headed toward him. And so in '62, they endorsed him. And he was the first Black person, the first Black Democrat ever elected to the ohio legislature. But he obviously was a different kind of politician. Most Black politicians very understandably ran for office in majority Black communities. They ran against each other to unseat each other because they felt that was the only place to go. Carl had the vision to run everywhere and run for seats that were new to the Black community. And that's why he ran for the state senate and eventually the house and made serious runs and won. So he obviously was somebody new and different. Incidentally, the way he handled the race in 1958 showed how different he was and how much imagination he had. And I remember the next year, while I was working, I went to school off and on, and I was working at a country club, and I Used to serve these same members at a roundtable every day. And they would get into all kinds of conversations. Well, of course, they were country club members, right wing Republicans, but the House liberal was one of the group. And he would say provocative things. And one day in 1959, he says, you know, in 10 years, Cleveland will have a colored mirror. And everybody kind of gasps and says, oh, I don't see it. I don't know how. And I remember thinking, obviously I couldn't get in the conversation. I said, yes, they will, and it will be Carl Stokes. And I felt that because he was so different from any other of the politicians out there. Well, he beat me by a couple of years, but he was right. I'm sorry I didn't tell him. Now,
Dee Perry [00:10:36] I want to have you expand on that a little bit because you've said a couple of times he was different from the politicians that were out there, Black politicians, white politicians too. What was so different about him? What made his approach unique?
Richard Peery [00:10:51] Well, one, he had a, I think, a general view on almost all issues. Two, he, as I said, he didn't confine himself to running where it was safest. He was willing to take on a challenge. Three, he ran very professional campaigns. When he ran for the Senate, I believe he demanded a recall. And he did it in a professional manner. And he just showed a depth of political skill and vision that most politicians don't show when they run for these offices. So he did things like a pro. And as I see, he had these. These very broad. He had positions on so many issues, and there just was something really special about him in that sense, plus his charisma, all these things stood out. Yeah.
Dee Perry [00:11:51] And so when he decided to run for mayor the first time in 1965, what did you see and here in terms of campaign strategies that he was using?
Richard Peery [00:12:09] Well, let me back up just a minute there. When your previous question about what was different about him, when he got elected to the legislature, he pushed through something that was pretty much unheard of, pushing the bill on his own and getting it passed and enacted into law. He pushed through a fair housing bill to block discrimination in housing throughout the state. And he actually got it passed, which was kind of a miracle. And he was voted the freshman of the year by the legislators. So it wasn't just me who thought there was something different about him. It was a very weak bill. It had to be watered down in order to get it passed the next session of the legislature. There was a new freshman in there who would oppose this kind of legislation. And he worked very hard. Carl introduced more legislation to strengthen his bill, and this new legislator worked very hard to block it. And he was able to successfully stop Stokes from advancing the bill, from advancing again. And that, of course, was George Voinovich. And he was elected freshman of the year in the next session. So Cleveland sent these two very dynamic, outstanding politicians two sessions in a row. But Carl was right up there fighting at the front lines, you know, way back then. That's what made him different. Now in 65, I think several things made him really important. For one thing, he did a political analysis that was outstanding. He knew where the votes were and how to marshal them. And so he made a serious run for mayor. There had been a Black candidate before, in the 50s, Alexander Martin, but he was not considered a threat to anyone. He was really a symbolic candidate for mayor. But Carl ran not as a symbol. He ran with the strategy to actually win. And of course, the most of the news media that analyzed and reported on local politics had no idea of what was going on. They couldn't understand the demands from the Black community. They didn't understand the political structure. And so they were just amazed when Carl almost became mayor in '65.
Dee Perry [00:14:42] Interesting. There was something you said that I wanted to go back to about the strategy that he used. It was very professional, and he was analyzing where the votes could be gotten. What were some of the ways that he used to get that vote out? Were there. Did he have a machine like ward clubs who go door to door, or was there some other way?
Richard Peery [00:15:15] As Carl pointed out in his autobiography, he never could have broken through if he had relied on the traditional machines. But he was always a volunteer in the community he worked with. One of the things he mentioned the. Was it mother's march of dimes and other charities, he would volunteer for these things. And so he worked with people who weren't in politics, but who were dedicated citizens. Just the kind of people, if you ask them to do something and they said they'd do it, they would go ahead and do it. And they weren't worried about being paid or the political consequences. So these were the people he relied on. They knew him. And he went back to them and said, we work together on this charity now help me become mayor. They were his best workers. In fact, the political establishment did not support him for mayor at that time. You had, I believe it was eight Black councilmen when he ran council. Was had 33 councilmen, city council at that time. And seven of the eight Black councilmen could not conceive of him being elected, and they did not want to break away from their. The good relations they tried to cultivate with the incumbent mayor. And so they didn't endorse him. But the people in their communities flocked to the polls to vote for Carl Stokes. So they got the message. And then next time he ran, they had to get behind him, most of them.
Dee Perry [00:16:49] And that's an interesting take on it, because I've heard other versions of the story where the councilmen were insulted that Carl didn't personally come to them and ask them for their endorsement. He just sort of assumed that he would have it.
Richard Peery [00:17:12] Well, I'm sure they were insulted because they were ambitious people who had built their own little political machines and didn't want an outsider from the community coming in and telling them how to run them. But as I say, also, they had connections. Had they supported Carl Stokes and Mayor Locher instead, one which he did, they would have been cut off from any good connections with the mayor's office. So there were. I don't know what Carl's expectations were, whether they would support him or not, but he plowed ahead even though they didn't. And he did the job in a way where they had to get in line.
Dee Perry [00:17:54] It was a very close race in 1965.
Richard Peery [00:17:58] Yeah.
Dee Perry [00:18:01] I wanted to go back a little bit again. Or maybe in the same time period you were living, you had been living in Cleveland for a while at that point. What's your impression of the condition of the city at that point, in terms of neighborhoods, in terms of how communities interrelated, the schools, the economy?
Richard Peery [00:18:24] Well, Cleveland was a far more racially segregated city than it is now. Of course, it was really kind of striking how much housing, how rigid the housing segregation was. And I know that when I first came to Cleveland, as some families were moving into the Shaker Heights area, houses were bombed to keep Black families out, this kind of thing. Banks would not lend in neighborhoods. They wouldn't lend to Black people in white neighborhoods. Very often the banks would only lend in certain areas for Black people. So it was segregated, but it also was a much stronger city economically. The factories were going, the steel mills and the auto assembly plants. So it was a town where somebody could come. And even without education, without skill, preparation, they could walk into a factory and get a good paying job where that would allow them to buy a home, send their kids to college. So it was a much more optimistic environment economically, Although it was rigidly segregated. The schools were, I think, much better then in terms of the comprehensive education they offered, but they were also rigidly segregated. There were many instances in which the Black schools did not have the same standards or advantages as the predominantly white schools. And the board used all kinds of tactics to maximize the segregation to the greatest extent possible. But despite all of that, you had. Every high school was a comprehensive high school. It had offerings of all kinds of subjects, Foreign languages, manual arts. And people did graduate from the colleges, segregated or not, and go to college and be very. They graduated from the high schools and went to colleges and were very successful. So in some ways, the town was worse, but in some ways, economically and educationally, I think it was a much better place.
Dee Perry [00:20:54] And it makes me think again about you walking into the Call And Post and saying, after so many times, I want a job, and getting one. So how early in 1968 did you get on? Were you able to cover Carl Stokes administration from the beginning?
Richard Peery [00:21:15] Carl stokes was elected, of course, in the fall of '67, and at that time, you were elected on the first two Tuesday in November, and you took office as mayor the next Monday. So you had six days to get ready to run the city. But I did not start at the Call and Post til about seven months later. So I didn't cover the beginning, Although I was following it avidly, as people were doing all over the country, really. And then when I did start at the Call and Post, I did cover a lot of city hall activity, and, yeah, I was pretty much aware of what was going on from then on. Yeah.
Dee Perry [00:22:03] Then I want to take you back before you started at the Call and Post, to how much you were paying attention to the 1967 campaign and then how you experienced election night, 1967.
Richard Peery [00:22:20] Well, of course, I was very much aware of it. Everybody was in town. I was not active in the campaign, at least not very active. I certainly did some things. I might have passed out some leaflets and things like that, but. Well, you know, we talk about the 67 campaign, but actually that started, I think, the day after he lost the election in 65. Carl Stokes as mayor was on everyone's mind then, and people couldn't wait to vote for him in 67. And he was not only on people's mind here in Cleveland, but across the country. He came so close to becoming mayor of Cleveland, and nobody had hardly dreamed of a Black mayor of a major American city until that time. And so he was the hottest person in the national civil rights community, and people wanted to come to Cleveland to work for him for the next election. All the civil rights activity, I think that took place after that '65 election was really focused around the fact that he's going to run again, and this time, people will be mobilized for a victory. And so there were a lot of activity. Unfortunately, Cleveland had the. Had a mayor who was a very fine man, personally, everybody says, but totally insensitive to the needs of the city. He became mayor. God, that's another long story. Has nothing to do with Carl stokes, but when he became mayor, Ralph Locher was the Law Director of Cleveland under Mayor Celebrezze in the early '60s. And in 1962, Ted Kennedy. Well, president Kennedy wanted his brother Ted to become the senator from Massachusetts. And so there was no obvious connection between Cleveland and Massachusetts back then. But in Boston, he had, of course, the Irish vote, just as Carl Stokes had the Black vote in Cleveland later on. But the real question was the Italian vote, which could go either Democrat or Republican. And for that reason, they say, president Kennedy said he had to make a dramatic move to sway the Italian vote in Boston. And so he appointed Tony Celebrezze as the secretary of health, education, and welfare in his cabinet. And it worked. And all of a sudden, Ted Kennedy's stock went up in Massachusetts, and he got elected. We know that history, but it also created a vacancy in city hall. The law director automatically moved up to be mayor. And he had never been a politician, so he never really understood what was going on. I think he made a lot of mistakes that Carl Stokes was able to seize upon and show why he should replace the mayor. And the most dramatic one was There were, in 1966, a number of Black preachers who were Stokes supporters and were civil rights activists, made some demands on the mayor, which were legitimate demands. I think it. I believe they revolved around police brutality or something. But they didn't get the response they wanted. They decided to just go to the mayor's office and sit in until he talked to them. So they went. He was supposed to be out of town that day, so he never showed up. But they just remained in the office. And so then the police were ordered to arrest them. So when these ministers were taken to jail, I think that more than any other single thing, maybe that people did that year, or with the exception of the huff riot, but that just galvanized the community. Why we have to replace Ralph Locher with Carl Stokes. It was a very emotional thing to arrest these clergymen. And then, of course, there was the Huff riots that erupted in 66. And again, Ralph Locher showed no sign of understanding and working for peace, he allowed the Police to really polarize things much more with really inflammatory statements. The police chief, for instance, ordered all of the policemen to bring their own weapons to the job. They don't have to use service revolvers. And the chief himself, instead of being above the fray and looking for solutions, he went into hough carrying his own hunting rifle. So this was the kind of tension that we had in Cleveland at that time, and people resented it. And so in 67, that was a big factor in Carl Stokes being elected. I say it was a national. This was being watched nationally. All of these civil rights organizations wanted to flock to Cleveland in 67 and work on the campaign. Carl met with them, all of the leaders in New York, early on, where they wanted him to tell them what to do when they get to Cleveland. He told them, he said, look, we got a plan. We can win. And part of that plan included not doing inflammatory things that would cause white voters who really don't support Ralph Locher to flock to the polls to vote for him anyway. You know, he wanted a strategy where they were. They would either vote for him, or they would stay home and not vote at all. Let the chips fall where they may. So he asked them not to come to Cleveland. And the only one who came for other reasons, apparently invited by others, was Martin Luther King. But he was a very calming influence as well. There was nothing inflammatory about what he said or did. He simply went throughout the Black community giving speeches, urging people to go to the polls, telling them why they had to go to the polls. So you didn't have- You had a lot of energy and a lot of excitement, but you didn't have the turmoil and polarization that would have been there had all of the groups hit the streets. And so all those things combined to get Stokes very narrow victory in '67.
Dee Perry [00:29:25] So were you watching the news reports as the returns unfolded, or did you wait until the next day?
Richard Peery [00:29:35] Oh, no, I, of course, listened on. I had to work. I remember very late that night. But I listened on the radio and heard Carl announce that he had won. And it was such a jubilant evening. I was not there at the headquarters. The headquarters was at what was now the Renaissance Hotel on public Square. And people who were there were so jubilant, they actually came out on Superior Avenue and danced in the streets. It was that exciting. It was exciting across the country and across the world. Of course, Carl's picture was immediately on the COVID of time magazine. And I found out, many years later, a new angle on how significant it was. I think it was in the early 1990s or late 1980s, when the Hungarian. Not Hungarian, Romanian President Ceausescu was deposed and assassinated. And I was doing a story about Ceausescu's visit to Cleveland many years earlier. So I had to call people in the Romanian community. And I talked to one businessman who gave me the information I wanted. And he told me that he just kept talking. And he had businesses in Bucharest as well as Cleveland. He went to Bucharest frequently. And he said one day when Carl Stokes was mayor, he happened to be in City hall, and he talked to the mayor, and he mentioned to the mayor a problem he had in Bucharest where the red tape was so bad. His daughter couldn't get married because she couldn't get approval. She wanted to marry a doctor. There was. And the red tape wouldn't allow the papers. They were sitting on someone's desk. Carl pulled out a business card for a Romanian government official and told the man, when you get to Bucharest, tell him I sent you. The man told me he did, and the next day, his daughter got the papers. Well, the reason Carl had that connection was a few months after he was elected, he finally took a vacation. He went on a European tour with his wife. And when he got to Romania, the President Ceausescu, the same one, met with him, hailed his being elected mayor as democracy in action, and then asked his Carl and his wife to spend a week at his villa on the Black Sea. Now, that was the significance of the election in Cleveland that I don't think most Clevelanders gathered really understood. But it was a very big time in Cleveland. I didn't want to be anywhere else.
Dee Perry [00:32:44] So by the time you got to working as a reporter in 1968, what had you seen up to that point in terms of Carl Stokes rolling out a vision for the city or initiatives that he pushed through?
Richard Peery [00:33:02] Well, Cleveland, prior to the Stokes administration, as I say, was a. Segregation was everywhere. One of the jobs I had before he was elected, the year before he was elected, for a while, I was going to school, and I took a job with United Parcel delivering packages. I went into many downtown offices, and it amazed me. I think in every office I visited downtown. And I mean, many of them, banks, insurance companies and all, I never saw a Black person sitting at a desk. They just did not hire Black people in white collar jobs in most places downtown or in the neighborhoods. If a white company, it was a white company. They did not hire Black people to sit at desk and type or do these kinds of jobs. Well, when Carl Stokes became mayor, that changed fairly rapidly. And I think one of the most significant things Carl did, It was little known, it wasn't recognized at the time, Had a profound effect on both the city and the country he managed. His law director, Buddy James, wrote model legislation to require everybody doing business to demonstrate doing business with the city. He had to demonstrate that they did not practice racial discrimination. And he had this model legislation. Of course, he couldn't introduce it because the white legislators or the white councilmen, for the most part, were virulently opposed to anything Carl wanted. So what Carl did, he waited until he was able to make a deal with the council president, something the council president wanted badly, that the mayor would have to sign. And so Carl pulled out this legislation, says, well, trade off. I'll give you what you want, you pass this legislation. And I was in city hall one night when this. Just a routine vote, emergency legislation, no discussion, no anything. I doubt that anybody in the room had really read it. But all of a sudden, this bill popped up. It passed unanimously with no opposition. I couldn't understand why. I couldn't imagine how they could vote for this because of their previous positions. It was only years later that I heard what went on the backstory. But this legislation did require everybody, even contractors who had been doing business with the city for 50 years or more, to show that they didn't practice discrimination. They had to let the city examine their records, hiring records. And if the- And there was a contract compliance officer who had to sign off on every piece of legislation or they wouldn't get the contract, they started hiring like mad. He really cracked open the doors to employment and with the banks. When he asked the banks to set up a program to lend money to Black businesses that had been denied traditionally, and they said they couldn't do it. So he actually pulled all city deposits out of all the major banks in Cleveland. And the same ones who had said they couldn't do what he wanted then said that they would do it. And they started lending money to people I wouldn't lend money to, but they just wanted to get it on the record. So there were many good businesses that got financing as a result of what Carl did. And, you know, kind of the joke was that if a Black person walked into a bank Downtown, they wanted to know, do you want a loan or do you want a job? We got both. But they were able to finally get the city deposits back by changing their entire corporate policies and ending that overt discrimination. These, as I say, these had a big effect on Cleveland. And as other Black mayors were elected across the country, they adopted so much of what Carl Stokes pioneered created here in Cleveland. This he's never gotten the credit for. But you hear about Mayor Maynard Jackson in Atlanta and the wonderful policies he had for inclusion as they built the Atlanta airport. But Maynard Jackson learned that from Carl Stokes and hired some of Carl Stokes' veterans to move to Atlanta to carry out these programs. And it was the same in New York, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, and all over the country. But this is one of the great legacies of Carl Stokes that I think has never been really identified.
Dee Perry [00:38:22] By the time you started working at the Call and Post, was it close to the time of the Glenville shootout and riot?
Richard Peery [00:38:32] It was too close. If I had been a month later, I would have. I wouldn't have been in the kind of jeopardy I realized later I was in. About three weeks after I started, I was out. I heard there was a shooting going on. I got the news kind of late. I heard three policemen had been killed and at least four other people had been killed. And there was rioting and shooting. And it was getting dark, I remember. And I being a new reporter and young, I thought that's what reporters were supposed to cover. So I got in my car and started driving there. I remember I drove down 105th Street to Superior Avenue, which at that time was an extremely busy street and with businesses all along the street. So I turned off 105th toward going toward Lakeview Road, where I heard the action was. The street was pitch dark. There were no street lights on. And in the buildings, storefronts with a couple of stories above them, apartments, no lights on in anything. The only light was from my headlights and from the buildings that were burning unattended along the street. I drove through this. I didn't know any better. And when I got to Lakeview and Superior, I saw a police car engulfed in flames. And I got out of the car with my camera to tried to get a picture. And then it hit me. This head had just started because the flames were so high. And I'm standing right in front of them, a perfect silhouette. And so I got back in the car, and unfortunately, the picture never came out for some reason. But I managed to get to the scene where the shootout was at Auburndale Avenue and Lakeview. I walked in the area, and by this time, the shooting seemed to be over. And there police were milling around. There was a lot of activity, and there was even, unfortunately, a body of a young man lying on the sidewalk. Police were stepping over it. Nobody tried to remove it. And I stayed there for some time. And then when I finally decided I would leave the area, As I tried to walk out toward Euclid avenue To go under the railroad bridge, A round of gunfire broke out from somebody up on the tracks. So I said, well, I better turn around. And I went back and I waited until I saw a group of black activists who had come in to try to be peacemakers. And they saw there was nothing they could do. They were walking back out. So I joined them and got out of there. All right. But later on, several days later, they said the young man whose body was lying on the sidewalk for so long. The police issued a story saying he was a hero who had gone in to help rescue a policeman. And that was the way in which his shooting was explained. Because he had nothing to do with the militants who were having this battle with the police. So, anyway, yeah, I covered that and wrote the story up. And that was my start, basically, with the Call and Post.
Dee Perry [00:42:25] And after. After Mayor Stokes made the decision to. I think it was the second night to not have white policemen go back into Glenville. What was the coverage like? Did the newspaper support those actions?
Richard Peery [00:42:50] You know, I can't. I don't remember. I mean, of course the Call and Post did, But I don't remember exactly what the paper said. I know they didn't understand very well what was going on. Excuse me. But what I can say is the tension after the deaths of three policemen. Of course, the police were very, very intense on doing something. The concern was the next day, the next night, it would increase, the bloodshed would increase. It would be much worse. And the hostility between the police and the community would be so strong. I know during the day. The next day, I saw army personnel carriers going past my house with the .50 caliber machine guns mounted. On top of going into Glenville, a number of community leaders went Downtown to try to find some way to work for peace. They met in the hotel a block from city hall. And they met all day trying to come up with a plan to recommend to the mayor. Finally, they recommended that if he would pull the white policemen out, who were, because of the hostility that they were displaying. And let civilians patrol the area, that they could do a better job of quelling any violence. The mayor bought into this, and finally he announced that no white policemen would be allowed to enter Glenville area. And that the citizens would patrol all they had. They were unarmed, of course. They simply had orange armbands on to show that they were part of the patrol. And they were turned loose out there. Well, there was some more rioting. There was some more burning and looting, but not nearly as much as people had expected. The police, on the other hand, were on the perimeter of Glenville, and they filled the radio all night long with the most severe racism that I think you would ever want to hear. They kept calling the mayor names, the n word, this kind of thing. It was the hostility over the police radio all night long was so extreme, it's virtually unreported in the Cleveland papers. The Saturday Evening Post magazine did what was a publication that really talked about what happened that night. But the amazing thing was that Stokes plan worked, that things did calm down. Eventually, the police returned the next day after the hostility had lessened. And it was- I always felt it was maybe his single most important act and that he saved an untold number of lives that night. I think there would have been shooting. I think innocent people, many innocent people not involved, probably would have died that night had he not done what he did. So that was. Although he never recovered, the resentment against him for doing it from so many people was intense, and some of it never faded.
Dee Perry [00:46:26] Later that year, on a brighter note, Lou Stokes came into the spotlight, Winning the challenge of Louis vs Rhodes for redistricting the 21st Congressional District. Did you know Lou Stokes at that point? Had you met him?
Richard Peery [00:46:49] Just met him to shake hands? But I did not. We weren't acquaintance. I mean, we were vague acquaintance as we were not friends. I'd never had a conversation with him. Yeah, that was interesting. After the voting rights act was passed and Carl Stokes saw that there could be a congressman from Cleveland who was Black, they had to draw the district line. Up until then, the congressional district lines were always so gerrymandered. The Black community was always split apart, and there would not. There was no chance of someone getting a Black majority district to run in. So Carl Stokes worked with governor Rhodes to try to draw such a district. And Rhodes, for his own reasons, you know, wanted to do it. Well, by the time by all the dust and court challenges had settled, the district was drawn. And Carl had always wanted to be a congressman, but by that time, he'd been elected mayor and he couldn't run for congress. Lou, on the other hand, had been a lawyer and had no interest in politics. He had never run for office. But everybody wanted Lou to run. He was Carl's brother, and he was so respected in his own right. So, yeah, he ran. And there were. I think in the Democratic Primary, there were about 11 candidates. Half the councilmen wanted to run, and everybody got his ego trip. He put his name on the ballot, but Lou won going away. There was no serious competition for him. And then the amazing thing was that I think Lou Stokes, as mayor did. I mean, as congressman, eventually did so much that had such broad national impact that I can't think of two brothers who did more not just for the local community, but had such an impact on the entire country as the Stokes brothers.
Dee Perry [00:49:06] Before we go on to high points in or other points in Carl and Louis Stokes career, I wanted to explore a bit some of the avenues that you took in terms of covering the news in Cleveland. There was an article that you wrote many years later about a place that you hung out during those years, the Lancer Steakhouse on 77th and Carnegie.
Richard Peery [00:49:37] Yeah, I hung out well. I always thought I was patronizing the place, but hanging out. Well, okay, I'll take it. Yeah. The Lancer Steakhouse was a restaurant that was very popular among Black people in Cleveland. It opened about 1960. And Fleet Slaughter, the owner, was a real restaurateur. He understood service and food extremely well. And people just had a good time when they went there. And that the early patrons were the Black elite of Cleveland here. Successful business people and professionals went there. It was the kind of place where men always had to wear a tie. They might have been turned away without one, I don't know. There actually were places like that back then. But yeah, so, and that evolved. By the time Carl was running for mayor, that had kind of evolved into the go-to place for Black Clevelanders who wanted to rub shoulders with movers and shakers or wanted to have a conversation about politics or something. So as a reporter, of course, by the time I became a reporter, it was just a gold mine for me. Anytime I wanted information, I could go into Lancer and a good chance I'd have a conversation with somebody who had what I was interested in. But during the Stokes campaigns, that was kind of the unofficial headquarters for his campaign workers. They would meet, they would go to meetings, they'd do whatever they had to do, and then they would go there to unwind and exchange stories. And I think without a gathering place like that, it's- Maybe he wouldn't have won because they needed some central place where they could just sit back and strategize and have fun. So The Lancer played a major role in getting him elected. There was no question about that.
Dee Perry [00:51:48] And then in 1971, when it was close, clear that Carl Stokes wasn't going to run for a third term, you had gotten a job with the Plain Dealer.
Richard Peery [00:51:59] Yes. Yes. Yeah. I left the Call and Post after almost three years, and I left for money. I was able to finally make a pretty decent living when I went to the Plain Dealer. One thing about being at the Call and Post, it was a weekly newspaper. I had the highest respect for W. O. Walker, the publisher, and Charlie Loeb, who was the. I don't remember what his title was. Managing editor. He was in charge, though. He was the guy who ran the paper, the newsroom and everything else. And they had built the paper up by, you know, just by struggling and knowing how to do everything, including set the type and everything else. But still, it was a weekly. And I always kind of had, I guess, in the back of my mind that the big leagues were downtown with the dailies where they had all this staff and education and everything. And so I went to the Plain Dealer, and it eventually dawned on me that W.O. Walker and Charlie Loeb were probably better newspaper men than anybody I worked under at the Plain Dealer. I had to go down there to really realize how great they were.
Dee Perry [00:53:29] One of your first assignments for the PD was to cover to get the Black community's reaction to Carl Stokes not running.
Richard Peery [00:53:37] Yeah, yeah, that was quite a story. Of course, I had to prove myself at the plain Dealer. That meant I had to be able to do story stories that were uniquely mine that nobody else would have done. Well, after I'd been there. I think it was nine months or something. Close to that. Six months. I remember it was a Saturday. Being new, I worked on weekends. And the big bombshell story in that Saturday morning's paper was that Carl Stokes was not going to run for re election. So that shook up everybody. My assignment was to go into the Black community and get some reactions, see what people have to say. Well, the editors had no idea where to send me or anything. They just said, you go out, see what you can find. Well, I only knew one place to go, and that was to The Lancer. And I took a seat near the door at the bar, and I think everybody I could think of that I would want to get the opinion of came through that door. And I was able just to sit there and stop them and get their reaction. All of the elected officials, the community leaders of any kind, street club leaders, whatever, they all flocked to The Lancer. That was the one place people know to go. And so I came back, I did the story, and I know editors were telling me how comprehensive it was. Nobody else could have gotten that story. And I was thinking nobody else knew where to go. And sit. And that was- It was the easiest story I ever got for the biggest impact.
Dee Perry [00:55:18] Did it surprise you personally when he announced? When Carl Stokes announced that he wasn't going to run again?
Richard Peery [00:55:24] It shocked everybody. He did. It's even shocked W.O. Walker, who was his mentor and greatest supporter. Maybe he. He had a secret dinner at his house. People were invited secretly to come. And even the Plain, one Plain Dealer, reporter was there, Bill Barnard, and he was told to stand on a corner with his wife and a car would pick them up. He wasn't even told what was going on. And it was only when they got to the house, had their dinner and Carl made his announcement that anybody in the room knew he was going to stop running for mayor.
Dee Perry [00:56:06] Did he say? Did anyone at that meeting talk about what his words were, what his reason was, or did he? Did he reveal that?
Richard Peery [00:56:18] It was always a mystery. I don't remember exactly how they reported it, but it was. There was no clear explanation. I mean, nothing people could latch on to. I talked to Carl many years later and asked him exactly why he didn't run. And the most he told me was that with the election of Richard Nixon and the cutbacks in funding for cities, he saw that nobody could be successful running a city like Cleveland. Cleveland had been extremely dependent on the federal government. And under President Johnson, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Cleveland was a recipient of millions and millions of dollars from the federal government that just would not be available. Programs that had been started based on the promise of the federal government, the war on poverty, this kind of thing. Well, those programs were being cut back under the Nixon Administration. The money wasn't flowing anymore. And so his. The biggest reason I got out of him was it just was going to be a very bleak time. And it was. Things did go down.
Dee Perry [00:57:35] Did you see in years after that, an influence from Louis Stokes that helped? That helped to reinvigorate the city and the region?
Richard Peery [00:57:49] You know, that word reinvigoration is a. It's one that to me, is controversial because some things were reinvigorated and while other things deteriorated. And of course, the media now talks about the reinvigoration. I mean, we never had a NBA championship before and that kind of thing. But we also don't have the good paying jobs, we don't have the quality of inner city schools. We don't have the chance at decent housing that we used to have. So some things were reinvigorated and some weren't. But yes, Lou Stokes did play a major role in what good did happen in Cleveland. And. Lou was so important to the city and the country and in ways that I don't think were fairly reported on for about his first 20 years in office. Toward the end of his career, he started getting the recognition that I think he always deserved. But he poured a lot of money into Cleveland that wouldn't be here. What Lou Stokes did most of all, that had such profound impact on the country when he was elected. I think there were only maybe a half dozen or fewer Black congressmen in 1968. And all of a sudden, five were elected at once. Lew and four others around the country. And these new guys who were really products of the Civil Rights Movement, they kind of looked around and they said, you know, we need a Black caucus. Well, that had been impossible because each congressman is an institution by himself. You had the very, very strong dynamic, Adam Clayton Powell from New York, who certainly wouldn't be in any caucus that he couldn't run. And then you had Congressman Dawson, who was very low key, but an absolute machine politician. And being a machine politician, he had. Nobody was going to tell him what to do. So he had all these problems. They wouldn't get together. Well, Lou and his colleague says, you know, we're now a critical mass. Said, well, let's just let them know we're going to start a caucus, and if they don't want to join it, that's on them. They have to explain that to their constituents. And so that's how the Black caucus got formed. And they let one of the older veterans, Charles Diggs of New York, I mean, of Detroit, be the chairman. They had to let one of them be chairman, but nobody knew what to do. Okay, we got the caucus, so what? And they just fumbled around and realized they were only spinning their wheels with a symbol. So for the next chairman, for the next term of Congress, they said, we have to have a real chairman. They selected Lou Stokes. That's one indication of the regard his colleagues had for him. Lou said, we're congressmen. Nobody else can do what we do. Let's start doing it. Said, we need to be on the major committees. No longer. Let them just assign Black congressmen to lesser committees. And so they sat down and they parceled out which committee they wanted each individual on. When they told that to the ways and means committee, they were just about laughed out of the room. They were told, you guys can't come in and tell us old guys how to run things. And they says, well, you have to. And they let all the other Democrats know that the Black communities in their Districts are looking at them, and so if they don't get cooperation, their constituents will know it. The result was that they were placed on the committees they wanted, all except Ron Dellums from Oakland, California, who was strongly anti-war, and this was still during the Vietnam War, and the ways. And they wanted him on the defense committee and ways and means committee said, we'll give you anything else, but he can't go on defense. He's not for war. And Lou Stokes had to go into the ways and means committee meeting and say, Ron Dellums has to be on the defense committee. And so he not only got appointed, but he eventually became chairman. But that's the kind of leadership that Lou gave to Congress that had an impact for decades on, because as they got on these important committees and gained seniority, they began to have an influence on national policy. So Lou got on the appropriations committee, and of course, without appropriations, nothing gets spent. So he was in a very powerful position. He became chairman of the subcommittee that provided money for the veterans Administration, NASA, and host of other federal activities. He changed. Those who reported on this acknowledge he changed the operations of so many government agencies. He would ask them, what have you done to open the doors of opportunity to black people, to all minorities? And, of course, these agencies hadn't done much of anything until he got there. Well, when he served as chairman of the subcommittee, they started opening their presentations. When they'd asked for their budgets to be approved, they'd open them with a statement of what they had done to recruit and promote and serve Black people. And even the intelligence committees, which also had to report to come before Lou Stokes. I mean, the intelligence organizations, even the CIA and the others, the FBI, of course, was justice. That was different. But There were about 17 intelligence agencies that had to come before them, leading one being the CIA. They set up a scholarship program to identify talented young Black people and paid their full tuition through college so they could join the agencies. And I happened to talk to someone once who wouldn't say much. She didn't say where she worked, but I knew it was a CIA. She was a secretary. And so one day I asked her, did you ever hear of Lou Stokes in the CIA? She said, only the Stokes scholars. That's what they call these young people who got into the agency. Lou Stokes did that with, you know, not only the government agencies, but businesses around the country. And so his legacy, while it hasn't been documented, hasn't been measured. It was profound for the entire nation. And that's why I say the two Stokes brothers just did so much that they haven't been given credit for.
Dee Perry [01:05:20] And those are some amazing legacies you've been talking about. But as we commemorate what they've done, we also are looking towards the future. And I'm wondering what young people today can do, should be doing to see if they can walk in those footsteps, to see if they can create their own legacy for the future?
Richard Peery [01:05:47] Well, the first thing young people have to do is, of course, get the skills, get the education, because if you're not educated, you can be controlled more now than ever before. By controlled, I mean, you can march in the streets and that kind of thing, but you could be ignored because you can't get your hands on the levers apart. So they need education, but they also need to be concerned about what's happening to their neighbors. I think that one difference between the late 1960s and now is that there isn't as much of a sense of community. There's more individualism. And of course, individualism can only go so far without a community backing it. So I think that our kind of. Our abandonment of seeing that our young people get decent educations, that they have the schools and have the opportunities, I think that's a. We're all paying a price for that. And I think that young people just have to make up their minds that they're not going to do it alone, by themselves, for themselves. They have to partner with other people in their community in order to advance as individuals. And until they get that really understood, they're not going to make much progress.
Dee Perry [01:07:23] Is there anything that you want to share that I haven't asked you about?
Richard Peery [01:07:30] I imagine there are a lot of things I want to share, but I won't think of them until we're through. But right now, right now, I think you've made me talk a lot more than I dreamed I could.
Dee Perry [01:07:44] Christine? Yeah.
Christine Hickey [01:07:54] I didn't know if you had talked about this before the interview, but I was interested in Cleveland Now.
Dee Perry [01:08:05] Oh, well, he talked quite a bit about. We didn't name it, but the Equal Opportunity Employment Ordinance that we mentioned. But you're right, we didn't. Cleveland- So let me ask about that. One of the initiatives of the Stokes administration was Cleveland Now. Talk a bit about what that was designed to do, what it was and what it was designed to do.
Richard Peery [01:08:33] Well, I'm not the best one to ask because I never knew all of its dimensions. I don't know who did. Cleveland now, though, was a very innovative program under Carl Stokes. Let me say this. When Carl Stokes got elected, he did not have the support of the overwhelming majority of the white community, although he had intense support from the black community. I think so many white people were really scared that they were going to lose something, that something would be taken from them. Then, in April of 1968, when he'd just been in office a few months, Martin Luther King was assassinated. There were spontaneous eruptions throughout the country. Cities burned almost everywhere. I think more than 40 cities had rioting in protest to his death. In Cleveland, Carl, who had his fingers on the community, really enlisted all of the organizations out there that were considered Black militant or something, and he asked them to keep the peace. He even walked out with them, walked the streets with them. Cleveland was quiet. Cleveland must have been the only really major tinderbox city in the country that did not explode that night. And because there was peace and quiet in Cleveland the next day, everyone embraced Carl places that he probably would have had to have a phalanx of armed guards to go the day before he could walk in, and the women would run up to him to kiss him on the cheek, literally. And I mean, so everybody thought Carl Stokes was the greatest thing that's ever happened to Cleveland. And that's when he announced a lot of social programs under the umbrella name Cleveland now. They would all be. It would provide different service programs, as I say, jobs, health care. I don't know all the things that they were. But the whole city got behind raising money for Cleveland now, and it was a great summer. He took some of the money and gave them to organizations of young people in the community who were borderline, being really militant and all, and who really needed something to do. They gave money to some to set up arts and crafts programs and do jobs in cleaning up the neighborhoods, this kind of thing. And it worked very well, with the exception of one group who took the money. But instead of carrying out the crafts programs they promised, they went out and bought guns. And that led to the Glenville shootout. And after that, Cleveland now wasn't talked about very much anymore, unfortunately.
Christine Hickey [01:11:47] I know you briefly throughout this interview, you've mentioned some of the legacy and some of the things that they've done for Cleveland. But if you could briefly describe each of their legacies, what would you. In your opinion, what was Carl's legacy? What is Lou's legacy, if you could tell?
Richard Peery [01:12:06] Okay. By the way, can I also suggest. I didn't. One thing I could talk about also is General Benjamin Davis, which is extremely important. Your father served under him, didn't he?
Dee Perry [01:12:18] He did, yeah.
Richard Peery [01:12:19] Okay. All Right. Well, either one. I got all day. I don't care. Yeah.
Dee Perry [01:12:30] Okay. Well, let's start there, because at one point, I think Benjamin O. Davis was a Law Director for Cleveland.
Richard Peery [01:12:40] Safety.
Dee Perry [01:12:40] Safety director. And so was that under Carl Stokes?
Richard Peery [01:12:45] That was under Carl. That was Carl's maybe biggest. Other than the Glenville shootout. That was his biggest regret, I think. Yeah, it was an interesting story.
Dee Perry [01:12:56] Then let me frame it as a question. In his administration, Carl tried to gather people he thought were the best and brightest. Some were young people who had no experience. Some were people who had had experience in other arenas. Like General Benjamin O. Davis.
Richard Peery [01:13:17] Yeah, General Benjamin Davis was the last stroke that Carl struck, I guess, to try to really get a different kind of police department. His biggest frustration, I think he said in his book, was trying that he could never really help handled the police. Ostensibly, he was the chief conservator of the police. He was their boss. But police departments do what they want to do, and you can only work with them. You cannot control them. And he changed police chiefs several times, thinking each one would be the one who would get control over his men. There were so many complaints of police brutality and police abuse of different kinds of. And somehow it never worked. So finally, in early 1970, Carl pulled a masterstroke. General Benjamin O. Davis had just gotten. He was just getting discharged from the Air Force. General Davis was probably the best known, most important Black hero of World War II. Black families at that time had his picture on the wall. He was that well known. He was the commander of what's now referred to as a Tuskegee Airman, the first unit of Black fighter pilots. And they were. They had the reputation in Europe as being the best fighter pilots that the Army Air Corps had. There were units that. Of bombers. Of course, the army was rigidly segregated. Black officers didn't give orders to. They were put where they wouldn't have to give orders to any whites. And whites did not. Weren't working with Blacks. But the bombers were always staffed by white people, white soldiers. But yet they got in Europe to where they said they did not want to fly unless they were protected by General Davis escorts. They were the best in Europe. And so he was the big hero. He stayed in the military. He became an Air Force general when he retired. He had three. Three stars, but he should have had the fourth, which finally, I think it was President Clinton awarded to him retroactively because he'd been passed over because of race. General Davis graduated from Central High School in Cleveland. He went to West Point the first Black person admitted to West Point in the 20th century where nobody spoke to him except on business for four years. He got the silent treatment, yet he went on to become this legendary officer. So when he was retiring, Stokes believed that maybe we'd get a man like that and if we can get him to take charge of the safety forces, we can finally straighten them up. Stokes went down to Florida, met with Davis, offered him the position to come back home to Cleveland and be a safety director. Davis accepted. It was a very, very big event. When Davis arrived in Cleveland, there was a banquet for him at the old Statler Hotel to introduce him to the city. I don't know anybody else Stokes hired and got that kind of reception. The police loved Davis. Here was the epitome of a military man. Ramrod back and forth, all that. And Davis was. I remember when I heard it, I remember saying, this is going to be Carl's worst mistake. It was my feeling that there's no way a man can come from the hierarchical military and be such a success and possibly function in a rough and tumble urban city like Cleveland. It just wasn't going to work. Well, Carl didn't see that. He thought that this would work. The police loved Davis. But then when they had cabinet meetings, as I understand it, General Davis wouldn't come. I mean, after all, Carl was a short term sergeant who never saw combat. And of course a four star general doesn't take orders from a guy like that. So Davis did his thing. The hostility grew. Davis was of course at the council meetings. They were very raucous then and not only would councilmen get up and rant, but the audience was full of people who. There were always people in the audience then. The council meetings were full of observers. Many of them would stand, would shout. They did not show the respect for the flag, some of them and all, and everything just grated on him, I think. So anyway, the police did, from what I heard, do a better job of patrolling and started to act more businesslike under the general. But the general and the mayor got further and further apart. And finally General Davis ordered new ammunition for the police. He ordered what they call hollow point bullets or dum dum shells, about 40,000 of them. Carl, apparently he had to sign the order, but someone in the administration leaked that story to the Call and Post. And I interviewed General Davis about it. He kind of pooh poohed. He acted as though it was of no concern. But I asked about the propriety of civilian police having dum dum bullets that tear people apart when they hit them. So it wasn't long after that General Davis called for a news conference, which I attended. And at the conference, he announced he was resigning. Didn't say any more than that. So naturally the questions were, why are you resigning? Why? And he said, because the mayor gives aid and comfort to the enemies of law enforcement. So everybody asks, well, how can you give us specific examples? You know, this is such a serious charge. What did he do? And the general said, I'm not seeing any more. And he walked out. So it was. I think it was simply a matter of a general being reduced to being a street politician, and it didn't work. That's my take on why the general quit. That was really the lowest point, I think, Carl said, in his career. Here was this great hero that everyone loved and admired who all of a sudden made this blast at him and walked out. But Carl, being unlike anyone else, he finally came up with an answer. He listed everybody that he had heard the general complain about. He said, while he had never been told who were the enemies of law enforcement, here are the people he complained about. And they were ordinary people in the community that the general didn't like. And finally, the community took. The African American community took Carl's side on that. But I know that many people I talked to in the white community thought it was incredible that he would let a man like General Davis go. So it was a matter of how you looked at it and how you interpret it. But that was one of the most interesting things that happened during the Stokes Administration and probably contributed to his decision to say, that's enough in 1971.
Richard Peery [01:21:41] Well, it was on the front page of the Call and Post, and that may have been the Call and Post. Coming out against him like that, that was a deciding factor. I don't know. I wasn't on that list of enemies that we have to say.
Christine Hickey [01:22:01] So I had the legacy one and also 23. No, 28. I'm sorry, 28. About comparing them.
Dee Perry [01:22:18] Oh, oh, sorry. I was thinking the next one. Let's. Okay, well, yeah, let's do the one on one comparison and then the legacy. So the question I skipped over is, did you have opportunities to interview Carl and Lou Stokes one on one over the years, and even if not just your impressions of their various leadership styles?
Richard Peery [01:22:51] Well, yes, I was lucky enough to get to know both of them quite well later on. Although I'd met Carl so many years earlier, I really didn't get close to him as a friend until long after he had left city hall. He went To New York and stayed for about 10 years and came back and became a judge here. And then that was when we used to talk frequently. And with Lou over the years, I got to know him better and better, and I found out something interesting that every reporter ought to have in the back of his mind. Although I'd known Lou here as a. I think we had mutual respect and all, I happened to be on a union executive board where I had to go to Washington every three. And I made a habit of, while I was down there, if possible, to go visit Lou Stokes as my congressman. And meeting him in Washington was entirely different. He was totally open and all this. So if you want to get to know a congressman, go to Washington and talk to him. Don't try to do it in his home district because he doesn't have time to bond with you. So, yeah, I became friends with both of them. But your question was, how are they?
Dee Perry [01:24:14] How were they different in terms of leadership styles or just social styles? What kind of man would you describe Carl as and what kind of man was?
Richard Peery [01:24:25] Well, Carl was totally charismatic. He was a bundle of charisma. You know, he could have been a Hollywood star, anything. When he walked in a room, that's who everybody looked at. And he was very bombastic. He was quick tempered. There were rumors. I never witnessed it personally. There were even rumors that he knew how to throw a fist if necessary. But both were totally honest. But Carl was the guy who didn't want to sit still, didn't want to be in the background. I think he had wanted to be a congressman originally, As I said earlier. I think it's because he saw he could be the complete individual as a congressman. He would be the one who. He could say anything he wanted that he felt comfortable saying. He didn't have to enlist all kinds of other people before he could speak out. But he was just a dynamic guy who was as much at home in a inner city pool room, you know, having the back and forth with the guys from the street who were shooting pool as he was at the union club with leading executives or on a college campus with a room full of professors. He just fit in everywhere perfectly. Lou was much more laid back. He was more like a scholar. He was dynamic in his own way, and forceful, but it was not with the flamboyance of Carl. Lew was a consummate lawyer. That's all he ever wanted to be when he started out. Many people have forgotten this, but Lou was a brilliant lawyer. Before he became a congressman. He argued that Stokes versus Not Stokes, but Ohio versus Terry, Terry versus Ohio case, which is one of the landmark cases in criminal law. He did that before he went to Congress, so that now every law student in the country still has to study his arguments that he made in that landmark case. And then, as I said earlier, he didn't plan to be a congressman, but it kind of came to him. And in Congress, he was extremely diligent and going on Capitol Hill, as I did, talking to staff people and all. So he was one of the genuinely most respected men in the entire Congress. People could believe him. They could bank on everything he said. And he brought a brilliance to his. To the job that people respected. That's why, of course, they made him the first. Well, the second chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. And I think he was the only one to serve two consecutive terms because he was outstanding in his own way. And as I said earlier, they both left national legacies. You ask about, I think, about money coming into Cleveland. Lou put a lot of money in Cleveland, but Lou served during the days when they allowed earmarks. I think they still allow them, but they don't call it that anymore.
Dee Perry [01:27:53] Earmarks.
Richard Peery [01:27:53] Earmarks, Congressman, after. When legislation is being passed, congressmen, without taking it to committee or anything, can put in special allocations for their home districts on things that they think are needed. And earmarks were a standard function of Congress. I think a lot of them, most of them maybe would put in earmarks that helped the corporations in their district that they didn't want to talk about. Lou constantly put in earmarks for social services and for things in Cleveland that benefited everybody. And you can just. I remember one day driving around Cleveland, I was on my way somewhere. I'd just been reading about many of the grants that Lou had brought to Cleveland. And as I passed institutions, I could say, well, Lou Stokes put money up for that. A daycare center. Lou Stokes got money for Karamu House. Lou Stokes got money for all these things. So he had a great impact on Cleveland and, of course, on the country because of. He not only got money into Cleveland, he got money into places all over the country that wouldn't have gotten it. Morehouse Medical College in Atlanta, for instance. It was the last medical school that was built in the 20th century because former Surgeon General Louis Sullivan, I believe he was surgeon general. Anyway, he'd been in the government. He wanted to build the medical school, said it was needed. And so Lou Stokes carried it through Congress and got the money. And it would not have been built without Lou Stokes. And there are places around the country where they'll tell you that story, that they have institutions and all that serve people, not simply make money for investors that they wouldn't have without Lou Stokes. And when the Republicans took over Congress and Lou Stokes was stepping down as chairman of his subcommittee, the very last act was when HUD came to him and said that they needed further authorization to spend the rest of their money. And he said, I will sign your authorization if you put up the money for the Euclid corridor. And so his last act was the rebuilding of Euclid Avenue here in Cleveland. So those kinds of things aren't publicized, but he did them constantly.
Dee Perry [01:30:35] And you talked earlier about things that Carl Stokes did for the city of Cleveland. Are there other things, other qualities that you could point to and say, that's a Carl Stokes legacy?
Richard Peery [01:30:51] Well, as I mentioned, the jobs, I think his real projects are softer. But I mentioned the job openings, the business openings that he created as a result of just his being mayor. As I said, there were so many people were hard. You know, it was before he was mayor. It was unusual. Not impossible, but unusual to see a Black bank teller in some of the banks Downtown. And when he pulled the money out, that was. There had been demands for change for many years, but when he did what he did, then that kind of opened the floodgates. That ended the discrimination, pretty much. And that was true on all kinds of jobs, and especially in contractors. Black subcontractors were able to get work because these. So much had to pass through city hall. Well, an example, when he was. Well, not construction, but when he was elected. I don't think any law firm in the city. City hired Black lawyers. I may be wrong on that. There may have been one somewhere, but in general, you could say it didn't happen. And Carl told the big law firms, when you come to city hall for something representing your clients, bring a Black lawyer with you. Otherwise, you don't get an audience. Well, that paraphrases what he said, but they did all of a sudden start scrambling. I guess I have a very personal experience, now that I think about it. When I wanted to leave the Call and Post and I applied at the Plain Dealer, well, I called and I said I made an appointment to come in for an interview. And the day before the interview, the Call and Post came out with a story I knew nothing about. I know it came from city hall, but I had not dreamed up. They didn't know I was going to apply, of course, because you don't tell them that until you get the job, and I didn't know what they were working on. But the day before my appointment, the Call and Post came out with a front page story about the Plain Dealer and its extremely poor hiring policies. And it even had a quote from the mayor saying that he's thinking of banning the sale of the paper on city property. Well, that was drama, but that hit me like a ton of bricks. I say, they're going to think this is a setup. I can't go in for my interview all of a sudden, and I felt very bad then I thought, what do I have to lose? So I went in for the interview anyway. Nobody asked me about the story and the Call and Post. All they really wanted to know was when I could start. So I never knew whether they hired me on my qualifications or because of Mayor Stokes. But I stayed for 35 years, so I suppose it worked out.
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