Carl and Louis Stokes grew up in public housing in a working class African-American neighborhood in the city of Cleveland during the Depression. Their mother Louise, widowed when the boys were very young, instilled in them the idea that education would allow them to become someone who could make difference in this world. Carl’s skill as a young boxer taught him the value of discipline, training, and a hunger to win. Carl and his brother Louis learned that politics, like life, was a lot like boxing: a hard fight within a well-defined arena
		and a set of rules.They learned to use their education and experience to fight the good fight in the political arena. Their struggles won them political power which they used to fight for changes in American society that benefited all their fellow Americans. This exhibit and the connected web arena tell the stories of how Carl and Louis Stokes “became somebody.” They truly became American political heroes.