As a former elected official, I resent the assertions of Justice B. Hill in his July 2 column, “Cleveland’s elected officials owed Carl Stokes more than empty seats.“ He wrongfully suggests the lack of attendance at a City Hall event honoring former Mayor Carl Stokes by current and former Black elected officials demonstrated a lack of respect by the generations of elected officials that followed Stokes. Such is not the case. We weren’t invited.
While Hill can rightfully assert that Stokes opened doors for Black politicians, Hill fails to realize that subsequent generations got elected on their own merit, hard work and the city’s changing demographics. Stokes opened the door, but we marched through because of our hard work, political savvy and old-fashioned shoe leather. Stokes left Cleveland for New York — our generation stayed and soldiered on.
But most importantly, no one can be castigated for not attending an event that they were not invited to. Maybe my invitation got lost in the mail. If Hill wants to complain about the empty chairs at the Stokes event, maybe he should point some fingers at Mayor Justin Bibb and his staff, who obviously did a slipshod job of planning…