George L. Forbes
| George L. Forbes | |
|---|---|
| Born |
April 4, 1931 Memphis, Tennessee |
| Residence | Cleveland, Ohio |
| Alma mater |
Baldwin-Wallace College, Cleveland–Marshall_College_of_Law |
| Occupation | politician, attorney |
| Known for | City Council President, Cleveland NAACP President |
| Predecessor | Anthony Garofoli |
| Successor | Jay Westbrook |
| Political party | Democratic |
George Lawrence Forbes (born April 4, 1931) is an American politician of the Democratic Party. From 1974 to 1989, Forbes served as one of the most powerful presidents of Cleveland City Council. He is the former President of the Cleveland NAACP and is semi-retired from practicing law.
Forbes was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of a sharecropper. He served a tour in the U.S. Marine Corps and attended Baldwin-Wallace College on the G.I. Bill and graduated with a B.A. in 1957. He received a J.D. from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 1961. He passed the Ohio bar exam and began practicing law.
He is married to Mary Forbes, and has three daughters, Lauren, Mildred "Mimi" and Helen Forbes Fields. He has three grandchildren, William, Camille, and Brandon
In 1963, he became a Cleveland councilman for Ward 27. At the time, Forbes was one of ten African Americans in the thirty seats in council. He was also instrumental in the effort to elect Carl Stokes as the first African American mayor of a major U.S. city. In 1967, Forbes was the chairman of "Operation Registration," a voter registration program targeting African American neighborhoods.
He later was elected council president in 1973 and assumed office in 1974. About a year later in 1975, Forbes and other (unspecified) investors bought out popular AM talk-radio station WERE and converted it into an all-news format that promptly flopped. It quickly changed back to an all-talk format.
Forbes was a polished politician and knew the ins and outs of the trade, eventually training future Cleveland mayor, Michael R. White. During the mayoral administration of Dennis Kucinich, Forbes sided with the unyielding banking interests against Kucinich before the city plunged into default. When George Voinovich became mayor in 1980, he made peace with council and Forbes. Due to Voinovich's low-key persona and Forbes's forthright attitude, critics of the Voinovich administration asserted that the mayor was giving Forbes too much power.
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