CLEVELAND — Former U.S. Rep. Louis Stokes, a 15-term congressman from Ohio who took on tough assignments looking into assassinations and scandals, has died at age 90, his family said Wednesday.
He died peacefully at home Tuesday with his wife, Jay, at his side, a month after he announced he had brain and lung cancer. “During his illness, he confronted it as he did life — with bravery and strength,” his family said in a statement.
Stokes was elected to the House in 1968, becoming Ohio’s first black member of Congress and one of its most respected and influential. Just a year earlier, his brother, Carl, had been elected mayor of Cleveland — the first black elected mayor of a major U.S. city.
Stokes headed the House’s Select Committee on Assassinations, which investigated the slayings of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. in the late 1970s and concluded there “probably” had been a conspiracy in both cases.
Later, he served on the Iran-Contra investigative committee, where he drew attention for his unflinching interrogation of Lt. Col. Oliver North.
Stokes was one of only nine blacks in the 435-member House when he first took the oath of office in 1969.
