NO MIRACLES, SOME PROGRESS

...In an interview with James Naughton, political editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, he later admitted he was not free to do what he wanted to...

...Asked why urban specialists have not flocked to Cleveland and the Federal Government has not loosed a windfall on the city since Stokes' election, City Council President James V. Stanton responded by asking: "Who ever promised those things...

...Now, the city still needs extra money—as do all American cities—but Stokes cannot convince his City Council of the fact...

...He has instituted Open House nights at City Hall, and has instructed all public officials to have listed telephone numbers, to receive the complaints of citizens...

...And, well, get Cleveland moving again...

...But . . . responsible citizens—those who recognize that the entrenched, ingrained problems of twenty-five years neglect are of such depth, scope, and magnitude as to require months and months, years and years of attention and treatment—those responsible people are excited at the base we are building and the evidences of forward progress...

...It was made possible by the impressive success of Stokes' pushing through the City Council a proposal to pay Green $28,000—$3,000 more than the mayor's salary...

...Finally, it was found there was some extra money after all...

...And some of it is concrete: It did take the city six weeks to pick up discarded Christmas trees...

...there was a tendency to sneer at the city, to call it "the Mistake on the Lake...

...Stokes' own appraisal of his administration is this: "No miracles have occurred, but some progress has...

...No riots, certainly...

...He campaigned courageously in hostile white areas, wit crackling, a bright smile on his face...

...Then he requested an income tax increase on the basis that there was no money hidden in the budget...

...Stokes' staff reached him by telephone, and he promptly ordered her fired, refusing even to talk with her...

...What we need is action...

...And President Johnson and Vice President Humphrey had backed him...

...K In 1967, the Cleveland police department had only 135 Negro patrolmen among 2,017 men on the force...

...There have been accomplishments: A port authority that business leaders had begged Locher to create has been established...

...Stokes' general election campaign against Republican Seth Taft, grandson of former President William Howard Taft, was a little tougher...

...A Youth Opportunity Council has been appointed to plan a summer job effort...

...Stokes did allege, in the campaign, that there was revenue "hidden" in the Locher budget that would make a tax increase unnecessary...

...While he was in the Virgin Islands, the Cleveland Press alleged she was an officer of a "cheat spot"—a bar cited by liquor authorities for serving drinks after hours...

...Its reputation and self-image as a stagnant pool of racial ill will and conservative mismanagement was wiped away...

...Somehow, he had to succeed in encouraging his city's black and white citizens to learn a new respect for each other...

...Taft was loaded with them...

...No miracles, some progress...

...Council President Stanton asks: "What did people think they were electing —a panacea...

...The mayor appointed Miss Williams his executive assistant...

...What was expected...

...He said: "We don't need a lot of expensive new surveys, reports, and studies...

...He did propose buying an $11,590 limousine for the city on the eve of his request for an income tax increase...

...Cleveland had designated 6,060 acres for renewal, twice as much as any other U.S...

...Stokes vowed to sell the municipal power plant and get the urban renewal mess cleared up...

...The city not only forced the former residents of the demolished units out of their homes...

...Operating from a minority base of power, he had to fashion new political relationships with office holders on the city and state levels...

...Stokes was out of town (vacationing in the Virgin Islands) and failed to return to take charge when the city was hit by a paralyzing snowstorm that city equipment could not handle...

...There are 230 more policemen on the streets, and officers have been told to take off the riot helmets they had been wearing regularly since the 1966 Hough riots...

...He operated with few concrete proposals...

...And he did fire, without a hearing, one of his most loyal campaign supporters, Geraldine Williams, who was heavily responsible for putting together the ninety-six per cent support in the black community that elected Stokes...

...Another, a staff assistant, was appointed because of his connections in the Hungarian community...

...on November 8, late-reporting precincts suddenly delivered a surge of votes to Stokes, reversing an election-night trend to Taft and giving America its first big-city Negro mayor...

...The alternative," said his friendly critic, "is a really first-class, efficient, creative administration...

...Cleveland had demonstrated it wasn't so bigoted after all, hadn't it...

...He seems to prefer them safe...

...Stokes took advantage of the fact that Cleveland is a supremely well-studied town...

...it lost track of many of them entirely...

...Stokes said, amid cheers: "This is not a vote for a man, but for a program, for a visionary dream of what our city can become...

...One of his appointees, the utilities director, is the twenty-nine-year-old son of a major leader of Cleveland's Polish community...

...The appointment of Richard Green as urban renewal director was described by Seth Taft as "a major breakthrough" and by the Cleveland Plain Dealer as "a brilliant stroke...

...He and his campaign staff were exhausted, and there was no time whatever to devise programs or hire aides...

...Among other well-documented evils in Cleveland are these: f From 1960 to 1965, the median family income in Hough, Cleveland's central slum area, dropped from $4,732 to $3,966...

...They said they would have told her to get rid of her affiliation with the club, announced it to the press, and closed the matter for good...

...Most of all, he presented unhappy Cleveland with a vision...

...Some of it is downright petty ("He hasn't put an Italian in the cabinet...

...He was faced with the task of restoring Cleveland's sense of self-respect...

...And some of it is sheepish ("I know he's only been in a few months, but...

...1 Unemployment among Cleveland Negroes is four times that of whites, and in some areas of Hough, youth unemployment is eighty per cent...

...At first regarded as an opportunistic suburbanite interloper, Taft proved he was well-informed on city issues...

...Stokes' statement at the time of the firing involved something about the public demanding absolute integrity on the part of its officials...

...In a recent trip to Cleveland for an assessment of Stokes' administration, I was surprised by the extent of sniping at him that is going on in the community...

...Carl Stokes is not a municipal Superman...

...He had to get Cleveland back into good standing with the Federal Government...

...In the business community and in the Cleveland newspapers, a malaise set in...

...As a result, Stokes and his staff work twelve and fourteen hour days regularly...

...Stokes criticizes those of faint heart: "Anyone who expected overnight solutions has already been disappointed...

...But white politicians said they would never have done what he did...

...The record, indeed, does not show MORTON KONDRACKE is a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times who has specialized in politics and national issues...

...Frequently rejected in their attemps to offer advice to the Locher administration, concerned private groups mounted extensive study projects to expose and document evils, particularly those afflicting large portions of the city's 300,000 Negroes...

...One of Stokes' supporter-critics theorizes that the mayor is "an anachronism—a Negro deeply committed to the interracial solving of problems at a time when every influence in the black community is for black answers to black problems through black politics...

...It was as if murky Lake Erie had, by some unexpected natural process, found the power to purge itself of its own pollution and become pure again...

...One of the most pressing problems ¦—and one of Stokes' most effective campaign issues—was urban renewal...

...But he made it known he was trying to lure urban renewal expert Edward Logue away from Boston (he finally did hire a Logue protege), and he let much be made of his two pre-election visits to the White House...

...H In 1967, there were 25,000 families eligible for public housing, but only 7,478 units had been built and 2,500 were planned...

...I did myself, more or less, and it was undoubtedly unfair to this new mayor, Carl B. Stokes...

...He had to reconstruct a partnership between business leaders and city government which under his predecessor, Ralph Locher, had become a ramshackle structure...

...That would mean plenty of Federal money coming in, and the city would get started cleaning up the urban renewal mess...

...Unfortunately for Carl Stokes, the expectations of most observers were unrealistically high, with the result that reports on his progress have accentuated the negative...

...Department of Housing and Urban Development got so fed up with Cleveland's incapacity to close out renewal projects that it refused in 1966 to grant new funds until substantial changes were made...

...Carl Stokes' dark skin made him stand out from all the other mayors of big American cities, but his color is not of itself a sign of administrative magic...

...And because demolition was planned, the city stopped enforcing building codes in renewal areas, contributing to housing decay...

...While covering the Stokes-Taft race, I had a few reluctant doubts about Stokes...

...He had said he would get Cleveland moving again...

...The U.S...

...He doesn't seem to be attracted to people smarter than he is...

...At the moment, Cleveland can pay a welfare director a top salary of $20,000 a year, while good number two men in other comparable city welfare departments are getting at least $22,000...

...Perhaps another six months or so will provide a clearer picture of whether Stokes has begun to get Cleveland "moving again...

...At 3:15 a.m...

...Not overnight, perhaps...

...One man was blamed for it all: Ralph Locher...

...The unmistakable impression is that Stokes was not behaving like a white man, but like a middle class Negro interested in protecting his image among white people...

...He refrained from the slightest mention of Black Power...

...Carl Stokes would bring in a lot of new, exciting people who would get things done...

...He produced position papers in reams, suggesting ideas that had a familiar New York City ring about them—little city halls, walking tours of the ghetto, police on motor scooters...

...Waiting newsmen were informed of her dismissal before she was...

...When the cheering reporters left town and the streamers and confetti were swept up, he was the one who had to take on a staggering number of big and little things to rebuild a city that had sunk itself into the dumps...

...I think it was you reporters...

...Civil Rights Commission, then threshed over again and again by the national press, the facts and figures made their impression on Cleveland, if not on its former mayor...

...Worthy of trial, perhaps, are neighborhood-run police forces, city-paid community organizers, and community advocates hired to offer technical advice and legal aid to neighborhood groups...

...He also gave the impression he knew exactly what was wrong with Cleveland and how its problems could be solved...

...He'd have to be the kind of person who is intellectually attracted to bright people—a kind of Kennedy type...

...For his part, Stokes has problems that no mayor, regardless of color or previous dreams, can be held responsible for, at least yet...

...He covered the Cleveland mayoralty campaign and subsequent developments...

...And, Stokes' term is only two years long, meaning that whatever is done has to be done fast...

...In parts of the Negro community, it was said that Stokes was behaving "just like a white man" in firing Miss Williams...

...A citizens committee reviewing the program concluded: "Urban renewal has not worked at all well in Cleveland...

...This administration," he said, "has ramifications far beyond Carl Stokes personally...

...Locher had to defend, to excuse, and Stokes was on the attack, with plenty of facts to back him up...

...Those politics, the theory continues, would be messy immigrant ("Irish") politics, corrupt, raucous, and inept at times, but aimed at getting money and power into the hands of Negroes, not at soothing the sensibilities of overly-prim white voters...

...Stokes' friendly theoretician is wrong, but with a few exceptions, Stokes' appointments otherwise justify the adjective most often applied to them: "mediocre...

...To Locher, it was all a "bad rap...

...My impression, though, is that Carl isn't that type...

...But certainly a new day had dawned...

...However, two other cabinet posts remain unfilled...

...Other major cities have rat control programs, training programs to qualify dropouts for the police department, decentralized public housing, neighborhood redevelopment corporations run by the poor, Pentagon-style budgeting systems...

...Stokes' critics also allege, with some justification, that his administration is short on new ideas...

...I can say that never before have I ever known the full meaning of the words 'God Bless America.' " Five months have passed since then, and those indulging in visionary dreams have been awakened by the hard light of reality...

...It is off-the-record, often from people who claim they wish him well...

...The Stokes-Locher Democratic primary last October echoed the depression contest between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover...

...In the search for new appointees, the administration has been strapped by an archaic salary structure that requires the mayor to get the City Council to make exceptions when someone like Green is found...

...Stokes' only other outstanding aide (besides Miss Williams) was shot in the home of another man's wife and had to quit city service...

...Kondracke, who will soon join the Sun-Times' Washington bureau, has won two Associated Press Newswriting Awards for his reporting on racial issues...

...A city councilman, scarcely a visionary, declared that even he had seen "not one new idea that this administration can claim credit for...

...K From 1960 to 1965, there was a $300 million drop in the city's tax base...

...And Stokes, the man who said expensive new surveys were unneeded, has appointed task forces to study urban renewal, welfare, and manpower...

...He had to develop a creative finance program, freshen a stagnant urban renewal program, find thousands of new jobs...

...There has been a slight break in the urban renewal logjam, but Robert Weaver, Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, said recently: "Let me make it perfectly clear that we are not satisfied on all points yet...

...Immediate action...

...There would be new ideas and new programs...

...Piled one atop the other, run through the U.S...

...The seeking of Logue and the appointment of Green may indicate "Somehow, he had to succeed in encouraging his city's black and white citizens to learn a new respect for each other...

...Race added a new element...

...This would seem a fair interim appraisal of Mayor Carl Stokes' administration, which is just getting off the ground in the face of admittedly formidable obstacles...

...It had proved it could change...

...If Stokes was short on specific proposals, he was long on charisma...

...But if you were realistic about Stokes' election in the beginning, you have to give him a mixed review...

...Stokes is planning to create a cabinet-level Department of Human Resources...

...that Carl Stokes ever specifically promised such things...

...Taft was a classmate of John Lindsay at Yale...

...That is what was said and that is what the reporters wrote...

...A second major problem is that Stokes was required to take office just five days after his election...

...In the process, it demolished 4,225 dwelling units during the last ten years, but built only 2,000 units to replace them...

...Cleveland, a Great Lakes port of some 900,000 population with a white majority, had elected a Negro mayor...

...White voters stuck predominantly with Locher, but Stokes still beat him by 18,000 votes...

...He promised he would appoint a white chief of police, easing white fears...

...If you go back to Cleveland now, six months later, you might be disappointed...

...It has not added to the housing supply nor has it arrested the deterioration of existing housing...

...His slogan was "Let's Do Cleveland Proud...

...It was a fair, equal, interracial administration he was promising...