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Louis Stokes, 90, first black U.S. congressman from Ohio

Former U.S. Rep. Louis Stokes, 90, an Ohio Democrat who became his state's first black congressman and served 30 years representing a portion of Cleveland, where his brother was elected the first African American mayor of a major American city, died Tuesday at his home.

Former U.S. Rep. Louis Stokes, 90, an Ohio Democrat who became his state's first black congressman and served 30 years representing a portion of Cleveland, where his brother was elected the first African American mayor of a major American city, died Tuesday at his home.

His death was announced to news media in a statement by his family. Mr. Stokes said last month that he had lung and brain cancer.

The descendants of a slave and sons of a domestic worker, Louis Stokes and his brother, Carl, the younger by two years, grew up in a public housing development in Cleveland and became two of the most noted Ohio politicians of their era.

In 1967, in a campaign that helped change racial politics in the United States, Carl Stokes was elected to the first of two terms as Cleveland mayor. The next year, Louis Stokes, a lawyer who had brought several cases to the U.S. Supreme Court, won the congressional seat that he would hold until his retirement in 1998.

Mr. Stokes represented a swath of Cleveland, a predominantly black district that he helped create by mounting a legal challenge to the race-based gerrymandering that had previously made it difficult, if not impossible, for a black candidate to win election to the U.S. House of Representatives. In Washington, he helped found the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971, later serving as chairman.

Perhaps his most public role came as chairman of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, convened from 1977 to 1979 to reopen investigations of the killings of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963 and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis in 1968. At the time of the committee hearings, and for decades afterward, doubts and questions swirled around the events.

In a high-profile report, the committee found no involvement in Kennedy's death by the Soviet government, the Cuban government, the CIA or the FBI. But the report also suggested that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy" - a conclusion that diverged from the findings of the Warren Commission, which named Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman - and cited "failures by the CIA and FBI" to provide the Warren Commission "with all relevant evidence and information."

In the 1980s, Mr. Stokes joined a coalition that sought to promote a black candidate for president. His name surfaced among possible candidates, but support coalesced around the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who made his first unsuccessful run for the White House in 1984.

In the House, Mr. Stokes was recognized as one of the chamber's most forceful advocates for funding of public housing for the poor, once remarking that if not for such government assistance he and his brother would be "either in jail or dead."

"We'd be some kind of statistic," he said.