The New Stokes

After taking office as the first Negro mayor of a major U.S. city, Cleveland's Carl Stokes disappointed even his most loyal supporters. His first five months produced little but petty errors, squabbles and a deepening frustration that so vibrant a campaigner could be so dull an incumbent. Then came Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination, and Stokes, 40, tearfully walked through Cleveland slums, trying to avert the violence that was to inflame 168 other American cities. He succeeded, and that April night seemed to bring the mayor to rousing life.

Four days spent in cooling the slums gave Stokes time to polish some ideas. Then he began to act. Farmers were killing pigs to dramatize their desire for higher prices; Stokes got them to donate the hogs to a project dubbed "Operation Pork Chop," which distributed 60 tons of free meat to Cleveland's poor. He launched town-hall meetings to touch people for volunteer work at city hall. He bewitched the audience of Captain Cleveland, a kiddie video show advocating good citizenship. His biggest decision was to call the first planning session for a major, long-term effort to revitalize the city. By last week, his $1.5 billion "Cleveland: Now!" campaign was already a thundering popular success.

Clean Beach. In its first 18 months, the ambitious plan will spend a total of $177 million to create 11,000 jobs and build 4,600 much-needed low-cost housing units. It is to revive Cleveland's long-stalled urban-renewal program (the nation's largest, with 6,060 acres involved and nothing completed), and set up expanded health and welfare facilities. So enthusiastic are residents about its prospects that 450,000 people have contributed--schoolchildren, factory workers, businessmen and a retired English professor who donated $1,000,000 worth of stocks. Together they oversubscribed the $11.7 million private portion of the fund; Washington started payments on its $143 million share.

In an optimistic "State of the City" speech last week, Mayor Stokes reported that 2,000 junked cars have been removed from the streets, and that 28,000 street lights are being bought. A recent health levy will generate an additional $320 million in federal, state and local funds over the next four years, and for the first time in years, thanks to a federal grant, Cleveland will have an unpolluted municipal beach. Not everything, to be sure, is perfect: voters have hiked police and firemen's salaries, putting even greater pressure on Stokes to push through a boost in the city income tax from 1/2% to 1%. Admitting many mistakes since he took office, Stokes nevertheless can now say proudly: "We've come a long, long way. One thing we won't do is allow the status quo to continue."

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