Born: 10 September 1949, United States
Died: 20 August 2008
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Stephanie Tubbs
The following is republished with permission from the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History at Case Western Reserve University.
TUBBS JONES, STEPHANIE (10 September 1949 – 20 August 2008) was the first African American woman from Ohio elected to the United States House of Representatives, and served the state’s eleventh congressional district for nearly ten years. Prior to her election to Congress, Tubbs Jones was Chief Prosecutor of Cuyahoga County.
Tubbs Jones was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Mary Looney Tubbs, a factory worker, and Andrew Tubbs, an airline porter at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. She was the youngest of three daughters, all of whom were raised in the Glenville neighborhood of Cleveland.
Tubbs graduated from Collinwood High School with acclaim and began college at CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY in its first year of federation, 1967. At CWRU, Stephanie Tubbs Jones founded the African-American Students’ Association (now the African American Society). Jones earned her Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and a minor in psychology in the spring of 1971. She was in Delta Sigma Theta, a predominantly black women’s sorority founded in 1913. In 1974 Tubbs Jones graduated from CWRU School of Law with a Juris Doctor (J.D.).
From 1976 until 1979 Tubbs Jones worked as the assistant prosecutor of Cuyahoga County and was elected as a judge for the Cleveland Municipal Court in 1981. Tubbs Jones was appointed to the Cuyahoga County court of common pleas in 1983 by Ohio Governor Richard Celeste. Tubbs Jones served there for eight years before being appointed prosecutor for Cuyahoga County.
Tubbs Jones was named Chief Prosecutor of Cuyahoga County in 1991. She was the first African American prosecutor in Ohio, as well as one of the first African American women to become the prosecutor of a major American city.
In 1998 she attracted controversy when she refused to reopen an investigation into the 1954 murder of the wife of Dr. Sam Sheppard. (See SHEPPARD MURDER CASE) Tubbs Jones claimed that the DNA samples that Sheppard’s supporters wanted reviewed were inadmissible because they were too old.
During that same year, Stephanie Tubbs Jones ran to replace Cleveland’s 11th district Congressman of 30 years, LOUIS STOKES. Tubbs Jones ran on a platform of political experience and community service, winning the Democratic nomination and continuing on to win the general election with more than 80% of the vote. She was re-elected four times and served in congress until her death in 2008.
In her first year as a congresswoman, Tubbs Jones wrote and passed the Child Abuse Prevention and Enforcement Act of 1999. Tubbs Jones’ legislative focus on children, education, and healthcare lasted throughout her time in Congress, and she authored and passed several more bills to promote healthcare and child welfare. Tubbs Jones also served on the House Ways and Means Committee, where she supported Social Security, Medicare, and progressive pension laws.
In early 2005 when Congress officially ratified the election of George W. Bush, Tubbs Jones and Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, initiated a challenge to Bush’s election. The two women objected to the acceptance of Ohio’s twenty electoral votes, due to voting irregularities in the state. Congressional lawmakers retreated to their separate chambers to debate the issue, and after Congress reconvened both the House and Senate voted against the challenge. It was only the second time since 1877 that a presidential election faced such a challenge.
Tubbs Jones spent much of her congressional career on the House Ways and Means Committee; after the 2006 election Nancy Pelosi selected her to chair the House Ethics Committee. Tubbs Jones co-sponsored legislation to broaden health care coverage for low and middle income people and legislation to promote programs that supported the re-entry of convicts into their communities. She authored legislation that required certification for mortgage brokers and stiffer penalties for predatory loans. Tubbs Jones was also an active member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Various prominent political figures fondly recalled Tubbs Jones after her death, as former President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton said that she was “one of a kind” as well as “unwavering, indefatigable.” Barack Obama said “It wasn’t enough for her just to break barriers in her own life, she was also determined to bring opportunity to all those who had been overlooked and left behind – and in Stephanie, they had a fearless friend and unyielding advocate.”
Tubbs Jones married her husband, Mervyn L. Jones Sr. in 1976; he died of heart failure in 2003. The couple had one son, Mervyn II, who was born in 1983.
The following is republished from the U.S. Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Stephanie Tubbs Jones won election to the United States House of Representatives in 1998, becoming the first African-American woman to represent Ohio in Congress. During her time in the House, Jones became the first Black woman to serve on the Ways and Means Committee and was one of the first African-American women to chair a standing congressional committee—the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, commonly known as the Ethics Committee. In the House, Jones focused on a range of policies important to her district, including homeownership, women’s health, and voting rights. “All my life I had wanted to help others, and I had been active in helping others,” she said. “I was always interested in service.”
Stephanie Tubbs Jones was born Stephanie Tubbs in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 10, 1949, to Mary Tubbs, a factory worker and cook, and Andrew Tubbs, an airline skycap. The youngest of three daughters, Jones was raised in Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood and graduated from Collinwood High School. At Case Western Reserve University, Jones founded the African American Students Association and, in 1971, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a minor in psychology. She completed her law degree at Case Western University Law School in 1974. Jones then served as the assistant general counsel and the equal opportunity administrator of the northeast Ohio regional sewer district. She married Mervyn Jones and raised a son, Mervyn.
Jones eventually became an assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor and trial attorney for the Cleveland district Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. When she and several friends worked on a successful political campaign in 1979, the group began promoting Jones for public office. Noting a lack of people of color on the bench, Jones ran for a local judgeship and won election to the Cleveland municipal court. Ohio Governor Richard Celeste then appointed Jones to the Cuyahoga County court of common pleas, where she served from 1983 to 1991. In 1992, she was elected the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, making her the state’s first African-American prosecutor and the only Black woman prosecutor in a major urban area in the country.
When Cleveland’s Representative of 30 years, Louis Stokes, retired in 1998, Jones entered the Democratic primary to succeed him. Jones told voters that she loved her job as county prosecutor but that she wanted to do more for the city. “I got to thinking what could I do for seniors and children of the 11th District; and not just here, what could I do to see that every child in this country has the opportunity to do well,” she said. She ran on her long record in public office in Cuyahoga County and on her well-established connection with voters in the district. Her campaign slogan was simply “You know me.” Jones quickly became a frontrunner in the race, as did two other well-known community members: state senator Jeffrey D. Johnson and Reverend Marvin McMickle. During the primary, Jones’s opponents told voters that losing her as prosecutor would be a detriment to the Black community. But she countered, saying, “With my background as a criminal justice practitioner, I believe that the Congress will at least listen to me because I’ve had the experience and I will be able to speak out on issues that affect criminal justice in our city and on the national level.” Jones captured the nomination with 51 percent of the vote and then dominated the general election with 80 percent. Jones faced no serious challenges in her four re-elections; she usually won with 75 percent or more of the vote, and ran unopposed in 2004.
When Jones took her seat in the 106th Congress (1999–2001), she received assignments on the Banking and Financial Services Committee (later renamed Financial Services) and the Small Business Committee. In the 107th Congress (2001–2003), she picked up a third assignment to the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, which oversees House ethics guidelines for Members and staff. In the 108th Congress (2003–2005), Jones left the Financial Services and Small Business Committees to become the first African-American woman to hold a seat on the prestigious Ways and Means Committee, which writes and oversees America’s tax laws.
Jones’s Ohio district encompassed some of Cleveland’s wealthiest suburbs as well as neighborhoods struggling with poverty. On Capitol Hill, she worked to control predatory mortgages and lending practices. As chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Housing Task Force, she facilitated a panel on homeownership at the Congressional Black Caucus Weekend in 2000. In the 107th Congress, she introduced the Predatory Mortgage Lending Practice Reduction Act to abolish certain fees and prevent lenders from targeting low-income and minority communities with subprime mortgages, which carried high interest rates. She routinely re-introduced the bill, and Congress eventually passed similar legislation amid the financial crisis in 2009 that curbed subprime lending.
For four straight Congresses—the 107th through 110th Congresses (2001–2009)—Jones joined Maryland Senator Barbara Ann Mikulski in introducing the Uterine Fibroids Research and Education Act. The proposal included funding for research by the National Institutes of Health and for raising public awareness about the condition, which statistically affects African-American women more than others. “Research is needed to find out what causes uterine fibroids, why African American women are disproportionately affected, and what can be done to prevent and treat the condition,” Jones told her colleagues on the House Floor in 2007. Although the bill never became law, Jones believed more people learned about the disease through her legislative efforts.
Jones also focused on fire safety on college campuses. Citing a number of deadly fires in the previous decade, Jones introduced the Campus Fire Prevention Act in the 107th Congress to create a grant program for sprinkler systems in student housing. She re-introduced it in the following three Congresses. The bill would have provided colleges and universities $100 million a year for four years and directed 10 percent of the funds to “historically Black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, and Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities,” as well as another 10 percent to fraternity and sorority housing. In 2009, Ohio Representative Marcia L. Fudge introduced the Honorable Stephanie Tubbs Jones College Fire Prevention Act—the same bill Jones introduced—which passed the House in May 2010.
In the lead up to the 2004 presidential election, the Democratic Party chose Jones to serve as co-chair for the Democratic National Committee. She told a local newspaper she was chosen for the role because of her judicial background and Ohio’s status as a swing state but mainly because she was “not afraid to speak out” for what she felt was right. She co-chaired the platform committee, which held party meetings across the country in order to fine-tune the Democratic Party’s message. On July 26, 2004, she addressed a crowd at the Democratic National Convention in Boston touting Senator John Forbes Kerry of Massachusetts as the nominee.
After President George W. Bush won re-election in 2004, Jones and a number of her Democratic colleagues suspected that irregular voting procedures in Ohio— including registration errors, long lines, malfunctioning machines, and high ballot rejection rates—had swayed the state’s results. Jones and a group of Democratic Members, including John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, held unofficial hearings in Washington, DC, and Columbus, Ohio, in December to gather testimony about Election Day in Ohio. In 2005, the group published their findings and recommendations in What Went Wrong in Ohio: The Conyers Report on the 2004 Presidential Election.
At the Joint Session of Congress convened on January 6, 2005, to count electoral votes, Jones needed a Senate colleague to join her in making a formal objection to Ohio’s electoral vote count. California Senator Barbara Boxer agreed to pair with Jones to challenge the count—only the second time since 1887 that a successful objection by a Representative and a Senator forced an extended debate in the House and the Senate. At the time of the electoral count, two lawsuits concerning provisional ballots were pending in Ohio courts. Jones argued that the state’s election results should not be certified until those lawsuits were resolved and that all the voting irregularities should be addressed by the House in the upcoming Congress. As the first to speak in the House debate, Jones said, “This objection does not have at its root the hope or even the hint of overturning the victory of the President; but it is a necessary, timely, and appropriate opportunity to review and remedy the most precious process in our democracy.” She stressed that her goal was to draw attention to the problems in the 2004 election as well as voting practices across the nation. “We go across the world trying to ensure democracy,” she added, “but there are some problems with the process in the United States.” Both chambers debated the objection and ultimately voted to uphold the results: 74 to 1 in the Senate and 267 to 31 in the House.
The following month, Jones joined Senators Boxer and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York in introducing the Count Every Vote Act, which proposed wide-ranging electoral reform. The bill would have declared Election Day a national holiday, made the distribution of misleading election information a federal crime, and required a paper ballot back-up for every electronic vote to be used in the event of a recount.
In the 110th Congress (2007–2009), Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California named Jones chair of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, more commonly known as the Ethics Committee, despite criticisms that Jones had used campaign funds for personal purchases and had taken free flights from special interest groups. With Jones as chair, the Ethics Committee initiated guidance for Members who earmarked federal funding—line items in appropriations bills for specific projects—to avoid conflict of interest issues, and for Members who flew on private planes. The committee also began a yearly requirement for all House staff to complete ethics training.
Representative Jones died of a brain aneurysm on August 20, 2008. At the news of her sudden passing, then Senator and Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama stated, “It wasn’t enough for her just to break barriers in her own life. She was also determined to bring opportunity to all those who had been overlooked and left behind.” Jones was succeeded by Marcia Fudge—one of her former aides and the mayor of Warrensville Heights, Ohio—in a special election on November 18, 2008.