Carl Stokes (Mayor of Cleveland) writes about Eaton
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Big Man, Little Man
For a brief time in Cleveland, I was the man of power. I had what no black man in this country has had before: direct control of the government of a predominantly white population. That power came to me because I seized a situation that had made me seem like a savior to men who ordinarily look on blacks as an alien and vaguely dangerous force.
Most of what you hear about the power structure is so much easy talk. We feel the vague presence of a monolith out there, some well-defined but hidden body with an organization that can act for it. But the monolith is a myth. There were no times in the country when certain men, the great captains of industry, could command what they wanted; they could bring together the resources of a community by the overwhelming presence of their personal wealth, power, and control over others, and perhaps our notions about the power derive from those times.
In the spring of 1966, I was re-elected to my third term as a state legislator. I had been the first black democrat ever elected to the Ohio General Assembly, and in 1965 I had lost, by an excruciatingly narrow margin, my first run to be mayor of Cleveland. My brother Louis, and I had a law firm of five black lawyers on Public Square, but I was dedicated to politics, I didn't
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love the practice of law the way Louis did. No white law firm accepted black lawyers in those days. Very few do now. So, like other young black lawyers in those days, no matter how talented, I was a jailhouse lawyer--a little real-estate business, some divorce work, and the kind of criminal defense cases you pick up by hanging around the municipal courts in the morning.
One day about 9 A.M., the secretary buzzed me on the intercom and said, "Mr. Cyrus Eaton wants to speak with you."
Big Man, Little Man
For a brief time in Cleveland, I was the man of power. I had what no black man in this country has had before: direct control of the government of a predominantly white population. That power came to me because I seized a situation that had made me seem like a savior to men who ordinarily look on blacks as an alien and vaguely dangerous force.
Most of what you hear about the power structure is so much easy talk. We feel the vague presence of a monolith out there, some well-defined but hidden body with an organization that can act for it. But the monolith is a myth. There were no times in the country when certain men, the great captains of industry, could command what they wanted; they could bring together the resources of a community by the overwhelming presence of their personal wealth, power, and control over others, and perhaps our notions about the power derive from those times.
In the spring of 1966, I was re-elected to my third term as a state legislator. I had been the first black democrat ever elected to the Ohio General Assembly, and in 1965 I had lost, by an excruciatingly narrow margin, my first run to be mayor of Cleveland. My brother Louis, and I had a law firm of five black lawyers on Public Square, but I was dedicated to politics, I didn't
10
love the practice of law the way Louis did. No white law firm accepted black lawyers in those days. Very few do now. So, like other young black lawyers in those days, no matter how talented, I was a jailhouse lawyer--a little real-estate business, some divorce work, and the kind of criminal defense cases you pick up by hanging around the municipal courts in the morning.
One day about 9 A.M., the secretary buzzed me on the intercom and said, "Mr. Cyrus Eaton wants to speak with you."